What do you think are the five biggest mistakes people make when it comes to marketing with social media? Read on and find out.
There are many ways in which you can fritter away your time and your money without getting the results you are hoping for Pole Assassin. Sure, social media are usually free or very low cost, but time is money too, and you’re probably using resources that cost you money as well.
So here are five key ways in which people miss out on the potential benefits of Facebook, Twitter, and company.
1) Not leveraging social media properly
That’s probably the biggest mistakes. Many companies and business owners use social media, which means that they invest time, energy, and money. But they don’t know how to turn that investment into a profit. They don’t leverage the power they have the potential to unleash with their investment.
2) Lack of planning
Diving in and throwing lots of stuff at it to see what sticks doesn’t usually get result in other context either. And it sure won’t work in social media.
Social media are just too vast to make an impact in unless you have a plan and focus your energy. Two things are likely to happen from lack of planning: lack of results, and overspending of resources.
If you fail to plan, you can easily get sucked into endless activities on Twitter, Facebook, and so on, and you may or may not ever get anything out of it. Before you know it, you may have frittered away your resources without getting any benefit in return.
3) Lack of respect for their personality and etiquette rules
Social media also require that you approach them the right way. You need to respect them and their distinct personalities and etiquette rules.
What works on Twitter won’t necessarily work on Facebook, and what works on either or both of these definitely won’t work on LinkedIn.
Even bookmarking services have their personalities. Articles that are a big hit on stumbleupon can be just as big a flop at Digg — and vice versa.
You need to get to know the specific social media venue and work with it rather than just deploying one-size-fits-all promotional materials.
4) Too much promotion
Speaking of promotional materials… Too much promotion can quickly kill off your campaign in any of the social media venues.
Social media are about being social and about sharing information. So you need to provide value, interesting information, feedback, and just generally come across as a nice guy and a good citizen and member of the specific venue that you’re currently using.
If you fail to abide by the etiquette rules, written AND unwritten, you can quickly lose your follower and/or friends, and even get banned from the network. So it pays to focus on just a few and really get to know them.
5) Failing to track your results
So what ARE you getting from your efforts? Be sure to track where your new leads and customers (and sales) come from, if any, to the best of your ability.