Those who truly understand social marketing have reaped great rewards from it. Those who are busy following this group of successful people have had trouble explaining the time and money they put into this venture. A social media marketing strategy needs to achieve the following: authenticity, consistency, patience, and great content. Two traits that contribute to failure are laziness and inexperience. These are some of the mistakes you have been making:
Expecting something from nothing
Posting on Facebook or Twitter once a month while having your annual blog post is great… if you’re looking to maintain your audience of loyal friends and your employees. People use social media to have conversations. They want to engage others as well as be engaged. They want to learn from authoritative people and get access to information they would never have had access to while offline. Your monthly blog post just doesn’t give this to them. You probably don’t even go through the comments made after you write down your 5 paragraphs. Wow. When you stick to these methods, you will end up drastically reducing your chances of prospects finding you.
Being a poor listener
You are going to have to apply the same listening skills you apply in face to face conversations on the online web. How do you listen online? By giving others time to speak. Who are the ‘others’? Lost fans need not get carried away with this one. The others are clients, consumers, industry experts, etc. Never rush to make comments without reading status updates or tweet carefully. Ask questions not to show your intellect, but to feed your curiosity.
Concentrating on making a sale and not connecting
Want to lose followers at lightning speeds? Just try making a sale with every tweet or status update you post. Everyone wants their social marketing strategies to give them high ROI so they make the critical mistake of always concentrating on profiting. Social media marketing is about forming relationships with consumers. You need to get to know them. They don’t want you to constantly remind them about the new products you have on sale.
You think about yourself too much
This is one of the quickest ways to lose your online following. If your social marketing revolves around how great you are, how much experience you have, how privileged others would be to work with you, etc. you are missing the whole point of social media. Be a giver, not a taker. People are looking for interesting stuff to read. If you give them this, you are creating a group of loyal consumers one person at a time.
Deleting negative comments
You would think it counterintuitive to leave negative comments on your blog for everyone to see. After all, you don’t want your consumers finding out about a flaw in your product, right? Wrong. Negative comments present you with a unique opportunity to transform an unsatisfied consumer into a satisfied one… in public! This will give you a chance to look good in front of your other consumers- a re-assurance they needed that they did indeed make the right choice by investing in you.
These are just some of the most critical mistakes businesses make when going about their social media marketing. Learn from others’ mistakes and don’t let this be you. There is nothing as important as securing a strong online presence.
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