For any business today, regardless of industry, there is an opportunity to use social media. Social media allows any business to build its brand and to add extra quality to its overall marketing message. That being said, it’s easy to make major social media mistakes.
The difference between good business and bad business on such an easy to misconstrue platform is very thin. What sounds like a ‘viral’ message to you could wind up causing controversy with just the wrong tone!
With that in mind, start with getting the right WordPress theme and, after building your website, go ahead and build your social media presence, too. While doing that, try to avoid these major social media mistakes:
Lack of updates
One of the most common social media mistakes is a failure to update your pages enough. Social media is like maintaining a social relationship; if you stop getting involved then people will forget you are even there in the first place.
And if you only pop up when you have something that you want (like people to buy/subscribe) then you will get little traction. The most effective way to run a good social media account is to update it at least once every day with some kind of helpful message or comment.
You don’t need to be producing a white paper or a high budget video ad every day. You can simply make a small, simple tweeted observation on a local, current or global event that affects your industry. You could make a small helpful point on Facebook, or post a nice little promo for a promotion that you are about to start running.
The options are there for you – you just need to be ready and willing to engage with them and them use them in the right way. If you don’t, then your social media pages will fall into irrelevance.
That said, it’s easy to over-do your social media platforming at the same time. Oversharing too much info, posting too many jokes or informal suggestions or even just retweeting lots of praise is a bad look.
Instead, use your time to tweet authority links, link up and communicate with customers and speak to other authorities in your industry. There is a fine line between being helpful, being useful, being vacant and being irritating.
Make sure you manage your updates a bit more and you should find it much easier to get the success that you desire.
Talking at, not to, your clientele
A major social media mistake that most businesses happen to make with social media stems from engaging in the wrong way. When someone tweets you or messages you to ask about anything at all, a polite and friendly reply should always be used. Make sure you look over their profile briefly; how will they react to an informal response?
Are they going to be impressed if you talk to them informally? Make sure you talk to the customer with the voice they need to hear, not the voice you want to use. Reply to all feedback, give people advice based on important industry details and make the most of every tweet.
You never know how a message could be construed, so always take the time to put it across in a manner that is going to be clear. Don’t talk at people, it’s offensive. Talk to them, give them clear information that helps them solve their issue if possible. Even in the face of aggressive and downright rude people, fighting fire with fire is asking for a PR disaster, so always be wise with how you talk to people on social media.
Excessive marketing
The major mistake that you can make, though, is being far too heavy with your marketing message. Any business that is excessive with how it markets itself on Twitter can be seen as self-centered and just a little bit insulting. Avoid that, and you can make it easier for your business to thrive when you get the chance.
Your business can use social media to market itself, of course, but it has to be done in a polite and charming manner. Just throwing links at people and talking about how great you are will get you nowhere!
Take the time to look at how you market yourself and how that comes across. It’s very easy to make the wrong impression with just a few links to your products and services, so be careful about how heavy you are when marketing yourself; it can easily ruin your appeal.
The wrong person in charge
The last mistake is putting the intern or the ‘young guy’ in the office on the keys for your social media usage. It’s a silly thing to do without knowing if they have the skill, temperament and expertise. Yes, they might know how to get you going viral – but is it viral in a good way? Or a bad way?
Always vet who runs the social media platform. The wrong person is going to leave you with a business that looks the age of the person who is advertising for you; amateur. Changing it up can make a big difference to how your business comes across.
Handing over the password and accounts to the new guy and the ‘cool kid’ is a good idea to some, but in many companies, it will be a mistake. It’s better to have someone in charge of the social media accounts with relevant expertise than someone who ‘looks like they use social media’.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to get around and dodge when it comes to social media. Social media needs a lot of work and it has to be used very professionally. With the right kind of care, though, it can become a very powerful compartment for your business to use.
If you avoid the social media mistakes above, then you should able to use it easier while seeing improvements and gains in the way that your business comes across. Use it wrongly, though, and it could become a major PR blunder for your business that’s hard to reverse.
