Social media has become an important part of online marketing and doing business on the web. We’re already at the point where people often replace websites with just Facebook pages. Many business are now participating in social media such as blogging, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to attract new customers and interact with current customers.
There is an art to using social media for marketing a business. Some businesses are very successful at it, but there many businesses who still don’t have a clue. When done correctly, using social media for marketing can increase revenue, but too many businesses are making these costly mistakes:
Mistake #1: They start it and forget it. Just because you set up a Facebook page or Twitter account doesn’t mean the floodgates will open and sales will just start rolling in. You still have to market your social accounts, post consistently, and interact with people in order to get them to follow you or like your page. They often adopt a ‘Set-It-And-Forget-It’ mentality. You gotta post. period.
Mistake #2: Not monitoring what is being said about the business. What are people saying about you on their blogs? Are people complaining about your business on Twitter, or worse bad reviews on your Facebook Page. The reason why you would want to monitor social media is that you can engage with people who have done business with you. Whether they are telling everyone about your great service or ranting about your product, you want to be able to respond and thank them for their positive reviews, or do to customer recovery. This shows people that your business cares about what they think, and hopefully you can turn any negative experiences into more positive ones.
That said, one of the biggest mistake is people don’t even track the reviews they have on their Facebook page. It sometimes takes just one or two bad reviews to turn off a potential customer
Mistake #3: Using social media just to advertise products and services. If you’re constantly (or 100% of the time) posting about your latest promotions, then pretty soon you’re going to turn people off and eventually lose followers and fans. It’s OK to do it once in awhile, but not for every status update. Social media is more about sharing content that is meaningful and adds value to people’s lives. That’s what people gravitate to. Remember to mix things up. It’s alright to goof off (professionally) on your page. Ask people how they are, share insightful quotes/ posts, engage with them.
Mistake #4: Giving free reign to a content marketing agency. If you outsource social media tasks to a marketing agency, it’s important to monitor your account on a regular basis to see what is being posted and whether or not the posts align with your company’s image and message. Let’s face it, you’re the content expert, not them. There are plenty of scenarios where they may never craft out that expert-article that reels in customer confidence.
So you gotta work out the content plan, and review with them frequently, whether weekly or monthly, to ensure that your Facebook page is on point.
Mistake #5: Not engaging with people. Engaging means having conversations and participating in the community. After all, what is social media if you’re not being social? Allow people to get to know more about you and your business. Take the time to learn more about your customers and what their needs are. Social media is a great tool to help you study the market and assess any opportunities to improve the customer experience.
Get on Facebook live, share with them when you’re working on a project. People love behind the scene videos and you’ll definitely connect with them on a human level. Your customers will definitely be able to see and feel the passion you have with your product.
Which of these costly social media mistakes is your business making? Get them rectified soon.
Till the next article