The 5 Most Common Mistakes In Social Media

Hi,
Are you excited to start your own social media campaign? More power to you! However, you might want to slow down and consider some common mistakes that other companies make. These are some big ones…in fact, these are the type of mistakes that can kill a social media campaign and besmirch the company name.


1. Spamming Your Way to the Top
No one likes spam…the food or the Internet practice. So why companies continue to use spam-like strategies is beyond us. Just for your information, spam doesn’t merely refer to unrequested email or poor quality advertising. Spam is anything and everything that sounds like an unsolicited advertisement—including posting commercials on social media sites, adding friends that you haven’t earned, posting external comments about how great your company is, and any other cheap trick you can think of that disrespects other users. While “selling” is acceptable at some point, you must not risk alienating your customer base by coming on too strong too soon.

2. No Strategy and No Measurability
Who starts a campaign without a strategy? Plenty of people online who figure that a few tweets and status messages later, they will be raking in the profits. Wrong! The only way social media will be profitable to you is if you plan objectives carefully and then meet them, all the while measuring your performance (using online software and other observational methods) along the way. Without this all-important step, you are just wasting time online.

3. No Commitment
Plenty of companies are interested in social media, but many will eventually give up the journey, figuring it’s not worth the time investment. You must be consistent with quality and quantity if you really want to start investing money into social media marketing. It’s best not to start anything you can’t finish, since quitting looks like failure to your online audience. Keep things consistent by bringing on more employees to the social media page or hiring a marketing firm to manage your campaign for you.

4. An Imbalance of Professional/Sociable Behavior
Walking the line between overly stuffy and too familiar is indeed a challenge, especially when an inexperienced worker is in charge of the campaign. You must always maintain a clean and professional image so as not to detract from your company’s brand. However, appearing overly corporate or soulless is also a major impediment. This is why strategy and proper communication (with targeted viewers) are both essential.

5. Reposting Information
The bottom line is that you can’t use every single hot social media site for the exact same purpose. Don’t bother reposting things you said on one blog to a social page, because (A) you’re duplicating content, and (B) you’re wasting your audience’s time. Formulate a specific game plan for each social site that’s worth your effort. Eliminate the ones you can’t use. For the best results organise this adventure into social media networking!