Last week, I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to be part of a panel, Harnessing Web 2.0 for Your Business at the National Web 2.0 Expo, which was held in conjunction with the SME Solutions Expo 2009.
Originally, I was going to present 5 Social Media Marketing Pitfalls Beginners Must Avoid but I cut the points short to 3 due to time restrictions. Anyway, in this blog post, I am going to include all the 5 pitfalls together with detailed elaboration.
To those who attended the National Web 2.0 Forum, this blog post is meant for you as well. Remember, keep all these points in mind when you are ready to make social media marketing part of your business’ marketing strategies.
Before I get started, here is the presentation if you need it for reference:
Spamming or Blatant Advertising
First of all, spamming is illegal under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 in the United States. If you are “harvesting” email address off social media platforms to send out spam, the FTC can actually come after you.
Spam mails or spam advertising are often being associated with emails that are marketing low quality or even illegal products such as unproven sexual enhancement pills, crappy weight loss products and fake money or business opportunity scams. Do you want your brand to appear or being categorized as one of them?
If you are planning to hire a marketing company to carry out social media marketing for your business, make sure an action plan was presented and pay close attention on what they do. There are a lot of marketing companies that send out spam mails to their client’s customer base without their knowledge.
As you can see from the screenshots in the presentation which feature multiple Facebook ad campaigns, the click through rates (CTR) hardly get past 0.5%. Advertisements don’t get much attention on social media sites. A well thought out social media marketing plan is more than just buying ads on these platforms.
No Tracking Mechanisms
Tracking and numbers add results to your work. Social media marketing is not free because you spend your time on it and if you hire someone to do it, you are paying them. With tracking, you are able to see and measure the returns of your efforts.
The numbers that you get out of tracking mechanisms will also allow you to compare the effectiveness of different platforms. If you have a presence on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., the results that you are going to get from these sites will not be the same.
If you already have an offline marketing campaign going on such as classified ad postings, newspaper ads or a TV commercial, tracking will give you the opportunity to compare the effectiveness between traditional marketing and online marketing.
Optimization can now be carried out with the data that tracking tools like Google Analytics and Crazy Egg provide. This means that you can now get the most out of your time, money and efforts.
Not Listening
A lot of marketers got started with social media marketing the wrong way. They quickly jumped onto popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and start broadcasting before listening.
Listening can help you to discover your target market on the Internet. People that you are targeting might not be hanging around sites that are buzzing right now. They might be hanging around online forums, blogs or even old school chat rooms!
Before joining a community online, it is always important to listen and learn about the “best practices” in the particular community. A community that communicates using foul words might not be suitable for your business. If you are able to listen and learn the way how users interact, getting accepted shouldn’t be a problem.
With the acceptance comes the much needed interaction and interaction is what social media is all about. When the interaction is already there, getting prospects to try out your products or services will no longer be that hard.
The Internet is developing fast. A few years back, MySpace was the top social networking site until it was being dethroned by Facebook recently. Listening will also be able to help you as a business owner to understand where the Internet is moving next.
Trying to Quantify Marketing ROI
Marketing ROI is hard to quantify. On the Internet, one may be able to track how site visitors turn into prospects, leads and then customers. However, if you are an offline-based business with offline and online marketing campaigns going on simultaneously, you can’t really attribute particular sales to a specific marketing campaign.
Apart from sales, leads and new customers, there are also some qualitative benefits that you can get out of social media marketing. The reach of your business will be expanded as there are no borders on the Internet. Branding, engagement with customers and prospects as well as the increase in influence over their buying decisions cannot be accurately measured.
However, one fact that stands is that with social media marketing or online marketing in general, the tracking and stats are definitely more reliable as compared to traditional means of marketing.
Inadequate Planning
The following are some of the things you can do with social media:
- Publicize discount offers
- Announcing new product launch
- Customer support
- Adding value by publishing useful content
- Share useful resources, etc.
A plan is important because you need to clearly spell out what you want to achieve with social media. Is it extended customer loyalty? Is it improved customer satisfaction? Or is it to boost sales?
Adequate planning for social media marketing also means the formation of social media policies if you plan to involve your employees. Formulating what can and cannot be broadcasted over social media platforms is crucial.
Other than that, plan for the bad things that might happen. Social media crisis like what happened to Dominos Pizza can happen to your business. Brainstorm for potential social media crisis and lay down steps to mitigate the effects.
Keep These Social Media Marketing Pitfalls in Mind
There are a lot of social media marketing pitfalls (10 Social Media Marketing Errors Businesses Should Avoid) but the above are the major five that every social media beginner must be aware of especially when this is the first time you are bringing your business onto the platforms.
Tell me about what you think of the social media pitfalls above. What are some other pitfalls that you can think of?
Leave a comment below. Would love to hear from you.
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Photo Credits: Orange_Beard
