With all of the information out there about social media, it’s tough to know what to pay attention to and what to take with a grain of salt. Yet even with all of this information, we all still make our fair share of mistakes when executing our social media marketing campaigns.
The following are a few of the most common social media mistakes that I’ve seen companies make and what you can do to combat them in the future.
Mistake #1: Lack of Research
This is a very important one. With all of the hype around social media (not to mention that creating accounts is free and easy), many of us are eager to jump in head first. Social media is a branding and visibilty platform and thus needs to carry the right messaging and voice. Before you go full speed ahead, first create a sparse profile and take the time to look through each site. Where is your target market? What is your competition doing right (which can really help you come up with a strategy)? What applications can be useful? How are people communicating? What tools to I have to communicate with my market? While Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can work to everyone’s advantage, if you only have time to manage one or two presences, it’s best to be able to pinpoint the right ones and save yourself time and effort.
Top tip: a great way of seeing what sites suit your business is by asking your existing audience via polling.
Mistake #2: Lack of Focus
When you execute an advertising campaign, you know who you’re targeting. When you do a public relations campaign, you know what market you are trying to reach out to. When you do an email marketing campaign….well, you get the point. Social media is no different.
Social media allows us to target with laser focus, you just need to identify who you’re trying to reach. Once identified, the key is to connect with “meaningful people” not just random people to get “the numbers.”
Mistake #3: Lack of Consistency
If you’re going to do social media, make sure to do it on a consistent basis—not whenever you can grab a free second. By consistent I mean daily, weekly, bi-weekly…on some sort of schedule. Since you’re growing your audience, you need to be in front of them gaining that visibility and credibility consistently. My tip? Create a schedule of when you will be executing social media and what messages you will be highlighting. It takes a few minutes, but can save hours of weekly work.
No time to even make a plan? Outsource! It’s not a dirty word anymore.
I hope that these mistakes are ones that you have not made and if you have, you will no longer make. It is important for us to all to take a close look at our plans and strategies in order to see how strong and effective they can be. Without strategy or planning, a social media marketing campaign takes a lot more time and a lot more effort to execute.
Guest Contributor
Chris Tompkins is the CEO of Go! Media International, a social media marketing firm.
Tracey C. Velt is a writer, blogger and editorial strategist who specializes
in the business of real estate. For the past six years, she's been writing
and editing for REAL Trends, is the editor of the REAL Trends blog and the editor of LORE magazine. Prior to that, she served as an editor for
Florida Realtor magazine and continues to contribute to multiple real estate
publications, both in print and online.
