Are social media design mistakes holding back your internet marketing? Are you sure? We define the Google social media design as the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.
Sounds simple. But mistakes abound.
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
– Edwin Schlosberg
Social media design centers on creating content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks.
Company messages, stories, and helpful information spread from user to user. It resonates because it provides relevant, interesting and/or useful information.
Hence, this form of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth. A key to remember.
Related post: 10 Social Media and Business Marketing Killers
We think of social media as just another marketing channel when we need to instead think of it as the influencer of all channels.
To improve your social media design, you must avoid these all too common mistakes:
Google Social Media Design … selecting topics where you have knowledge
On topics you must know as much or more than your audience … readers expect to learn something from you.
Google Social Media Design … relying on quality
It is all about quality … quality is much more valuable than quantity. It is much better to post 1 quality post per week versus 5 weak posts.
Valuable content is essential.
Google social media design … ignoring focus on engagement
Social media is about building relationships … meaning conversation is required. Don’t add to the noise. Put the focus on being social and making friends.
Let me give you an example from the Nordstrom department store
American fashion retailer Nordstrom began collecting examples of great customer service from its employees.
They called them Nordy stories.
For example, a customer comes into the store, laden with items already purchased from rival store Macy’s. The customer shops in Nordstrom, comes to the till and takes advantage of Nordtrom’s free giftwrap service.
The Nordstrom employee obliges and then, to the surprise and delight of the customer, offers to wrap the Macy’s gifts too for no extra charge.
In another example a customer comes into Nordstrom wishing to return a $17 tyre iron.
They don’t have a receipt. Nordstrom doesn’t sell tyre irons. The employee gives the customer a full refund.
That employee knows full well that the Nordstrom customer has an average lifetime spend of $8,000. What’s $17 compared to that?
By publishing these stories, Nordstrom not only gives concrete examples of how great their service is to customers, but also to new employees as well.
Your employee handbook might say ‘give great customer service’ but to the average employee that basically just says ‘smile, make eye contact and tuck in your shirt’.
Nordy stories give concrete examples to the employees to show them exactly how good customer engagement and service is given.
Google social media design … not using visuals
Remember, a picture or image … is worth 1000 words. Visual marketing is growing rapidly and you need to rely on it, particularly short videos.
Here is a great example from GE. GE took off all the text-heavy mission statements from its website and replaced them with videos of examples of the company’s work instead.
These videos achieved 2m views. It’s a simple application of persuasive web design at work. The human brain processes visuals 50 times faster than text.
Google social media design … complex writing
Keep you writing as short and simple as possible. Edit, edit, and edit some more.
Google social media design … irrelevant subjects
Ensure you know who your target audience is and write relevant subjects of interest to them.
Here is an example to illustrate.
Significant Objects is an incredibly successful example of telling stories to give once worthless products a value.
This was an experiment devised by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, where they bought hundreds of thrift-store items, purchased for an average price of $1.25 each, asked 200 writers including Meg Cabot, Jonathan Lethem and William Gibson to contribute fictional narratives to the items and auctioned them off on ebay.
These stories led to an extraordinary profit of over 2000%
Not paying attention to results
Measure your accomplishments … against your objectives. Learn and apply learning if you want to get consistently better.
Social media design inspiration … employing shortcuts
There are NO shortcuts … it requires time and energy, and lots of persistence and patience. Don’t expect good results in a few short weeks. Don’t give up.
We are finding more and more businesses are defining meaningful social media design implementations.
“Web merchants view social media more as a medium to build up brand awareness and customer loyalty than as a way to drive immediate sales,” says Internet Retailer reporting on its survey of 175 companies that sell online.
Survey participants included 85 web-only merchants, 40 consumer brand manufacturers, 34 retail chains, and 16 catalog companies.
Here’s a rundown of the findings:
96 percent say social media campaigns are important to the future of their Internet business; 53 percent label it very important.
90 percent have a Facebook page, 75 percent are active on Twitter and 54 percent use Pinterest
51 percent post videos on YouTube, 9 percent use Google+ and 15 percent leverage Instagram.
The more success you have with customer engagement via your social media design, either on-line or off, the better your understanding of their needs and priorities.
Having the best customer insights makes it much easier for you to define your next moves and improve your odds of success.
