Mistakes are ok if you are learning. But avoid these social media and business marketing killers.
Many of our small business clients are new to social media. One of the requests we get from them is to provide a simple system to do the work. Unfortunately, the truth is that there is no such system.
Related post: 17 Cardinal Sins to Avoid in a Social Response Strategy
Every situation is unique and social media is as much an art as it is a science. However, having said that, there are some general social media mistakes that provide a framework of wisdom–wisdom that you can apply in almost every unique situation to capitalize on social media opportunities and maximize your potential for success.
“Vanity metrics” (friends, followers, “likes”) are the most common metrics marketers use to measure the business impact of social media.
But just 14% of marketers tie vanity metrics to sales levels.
I get it. Seeing your follower count grow and grow and getting a lot of likes on Facebook feels great.
While there are many mistakes to learn from out there, here is our list of the most important ones to learn from:
Social media and business … ignoring content marketing
Don’t make the fatal mistake of using more ads to compensate for not employing content marketing (or bad content). Rather, create quality content to convert your ads. If folks don’t like your content, they are not going to stick around long enough to be converted (i.e., perform an action such as clicking or subscribing). Likewise, more social media postings and links won’t compensate for bad content and poor headings either!
Social media is like a bank account. You simply cannot withdraw more value than you deposit into your account. Too many people view social media as an auto-pilot technique for marketing messages.
I assure you… it is not. It requires effort and careful planning, and you will only get out of it what you are willing to put into it. Remember the quote, garbage in, garbage out? Well, it certainly applies to marketing messages.
A quick splash of value-free marketing will only produce quick and limited results at best. Quick social media splashes with little meaning or value add, always will be worse than no marketing at all.
No timeline consistency
Social media is a 24/7 marketing and customer engagement process—not a once-a-week occasion. You need to monitor constantly and interact with customers. You can’t pencil in “social media time” on your Google calendar once a week and hope to be successful. And remember it takes a lot of time and energy. Don’t start if you have little to spare.
Lacking emotion and enthusiasm
Social media, like most marketing, must be emotion-driven to be successful. People’s behavior (e.g., sharing your content or buying your product) is based on emotional responses. Your social media marketing should appeal to their hearts more than their heads.
Being everywhere and doing everything
Don’t go to social media platforms because of their image. Go to where you will find your target audience. For example, Facebook–although its well-documented and highly touted popularity–is the last place some small businesses should go. Don’t chase after the “best” or “most popular” networks—chase your audience! Find out where they are and live there. And you can’t be everywhere and do everything. Start small, learn how to do it well, and then add on more networks a little at a time.
Social media marketing killers … ignoring results and learning
You must know what is working and how well. Consider each thing you do as a small experiment. Look at measured results against your objectives. Do more of what is working, and stop doing things that aren’t.
Measure selectively. Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should. Not all metrics are created equal—or even worthwhile. Carefully select those metrics that provide feedback related to your social media plan and objectives. Remember what Einstein reportedly said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
New digital marketing ideas … lack a network integration strategy
To be successful in social media requires understanding and mastering the inherent differences between social media networks. For example, Facebook embodies the spirit of pure social interaction, while Twitter is all about communicating news and information.
Understand the difference and decide what is important for your marketing. Be sure and be consistent across platforms by integrating your objectives and messages.
Marketing always has been and always will be about telling stories… stories that influence behavior and convince people to act.
Make sure your social media marketing tells a story and that your story is compelling and relevant. Pay particular attention to attention-grabbing headlines.
Social media and business … assume all marketing is the same
The nuances of social media marketing are entirely distinct from that of traditional marketing. Just as it is important to understand the differences between networks, it is equally important to understand how and why social media marketing is different from traditional marketing.
Hint: stop interrupting what your customers are interested in and be what they are interested in.
Related post: 13 Social Media Marketing Trends Sure to Reduce Business
Ignore customer experience
Strive to keep your customers’ experience consistent, enjoyable, and simple. Give them something worth remembering and telling their friends. Not paying attention to customers’ experience is a very bad thing. Customers will always have an experience, and implicit ones won’t be good ones.
In summary, there are many social media marketing mistakes from which to learn. As you follow your competitors, look at their strengths and weaknesses and watch for things to learn. What do you think? What did you learn from these mistakes?
Remember, it is not what social media marketing does with the consumer; it is what the consumer does after viewing social media marketing.
What are some of your experiences with social media marketing lessons learned?
It’s up to you to keep improving your social media marketing. It is in constant change.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on social media mistakes from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
I’ve been providing my readers and subscribers free (hopefully useful) information for years now, and today I’m changing just how I do that. Two of the topics will be creative business and marketing as well as internet business marketing.
For the most part, this has been a fair way to trade information and learn.
Today, I’m going to change the model a bit.
Instead of offering the odd eBook or webinar every month or so I’ve created the Digital Spark Marketing Learning Center Content Community so you can have it all whenever you want.
It’s fast, free and convenient.
I believe this is a much better way to both offer and consume content. I think you’ll be pleased with just how much content we have waiting for you.
Here are 6 Remarkable free E-books that you can access today or anytime you desire.
Business marketing examples.
How to Use Content Marketing … a Free E-book
Have you seen statistics on the amount of information available today … doubling every 18 to 24 months? Amazing isn’t it? So if you are thinking of a strategy to use content marketing, be prepared to generate top quality products.
Why? It is simple. Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds – one second less than a goldfish! It is not surprising then that the battle over content marketing is getting more difficult every day.
All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and each one of us who creates content. But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think and act much more competitively.
How to Create Effective Brand Marketing … Try This E-Book
As marketing types, we confess to having a visual bias when it comes to an expression of creative branding. We tend to experience a brand primarily through our eyes, by watching how it draws us into its world. And when we’re working with clients on a small business brand marketing project, one of our first steps is to create a book of selected pictures and graphics that create a feeling of the brand’s character.
Do you express feelings and emotion often with your customers? Are you aware of the ways you are can influence brand attention? Well, remember this: the more feelings and emotion you express, the more attention to your brand. And the more influence it can create. Not rocket science is it? But without it, you will be losing attention to your brand.
As long as it’s positive, there is no such thing as too much brand attention. If you play your cards right, you can roll all of that great attention into growth for your company.
How to Build Value Propositions and Taglines … Check Out This E-Book
What would you say is the most important element of marketing for your business? Not a trick question, but one that many of our clients miss. It is how to build value propositions in our opinion. Like Jack Welch says, if you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. It is that simple. Save your money and time.
We have found many businesses that cannot articulate how their business is truly unique.1 What analogy to this situation stands out in our mind? Trying to win against your competition without good business differentiation is like trying to sail with no wind.
There are two ways to win in a competitive market:
Achieve sustainable lower cost (and therefore price) than your competition for the same products and services (very difficult, if not impossible)
Deliver more value, despite equal or higher price
There is obviously not one answer that fits all in the question of customer choices.
Business and marketing … How to Win Word of Mouth Marketing … Review This E-Book
You can’t say it. You have to get consumers to say it to each other.
At its core, building winning word of mouth marketing is simply to spread ideas that help your business or cause. It’s putting material out there that by its very nature attracts attention and discussion.
Perhaps the most objective way to look at the practice of this marketing is to examine the research of some highly intelligent folks who have dedicated years to deciphering the common elements of viral content.
Is this guidebook, I’ll dissect some of my favorite research from an associate professor at the Wharton School of Business, as well as examine some classic word of mouth marketing examples to see what lessons can be had from some very successful campaigns.
Stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in.
It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed, despite the growth in on-line marketing, that even remarkable businesses also advertise the old fashion way. It is a key component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value. Lots of helpful information in this guidebook that will assist in creating winning advertising.
According to Nielsen, there are 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day. And Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds – one second less than a goldfish!
We check our phones 150 times per day. We check our email up to 30 times an hour. And the amount of information in the world continues to double every 18 months.
All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and everyone of us who creates content. But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think and act like publishers.
Ever written an ad for print advertising, or thought about it? I’ve done marketing for my clients in small businesses for the past 4+ years, and I’ve learned a few things about making advertising look professional even on a tight budget. Many small businesses don’t have a lot of time or resources to have ads professionally made. So what’s a small business to do?
If everyone is creating content, how does a business break through the noise? How do we reach our customers in a way that engages them?
Business marketing examples … Small Business Social Media Marketing … a Valuable E-Book
The networked consumers know more than most companies about their products and services. Whether the facts are good or bad, they tell everybody about what they know.
Have you had this experience with networked consumers? Certainly, motivates you to know about small business social media marketing, doesn’t it?
“Social media” is a way for people to communicate and interact online. While it has been around since the dawn of the World Wide Web, in the last ten years or so we’ve seen a surge in both the number and popularity of social media sites. It’s called social media because users engage with (and around) it in a social context, which can include conversations, commentary, and other user-generated annotations and engagement interactions.
Publishing content has become exponentially simpler over the last several years, which has helped skyrocket the use of social media. Non-technical web users are now able to easily create content on a rapidly growing number of platforms, including those that are owned (hosted communities, blogs, etc.), rented (social networks or third-party communities), and occupied (commenting, contributing, etc.).
For businesses, the shift in web consumerism and the accompanying rise in social media brings excellent opportunity. The real magic lies in the ability to grow lasting and scalable relationships with your organization’s customer base through social media. Whether your business is listening and engaging or not, customers are having conversations relevant to your operations. It’s better to be part of the conversation, right?
The bottom line
I hope you find our free guidebooks as valuable as you do the learning center. We encourage you to drop us an email to let us know what you think.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
