The 10 Most Common Social Media Mistakes. Which Ones Are You Guilty Of?
When I wrote How to Make Money with Social Media with Dr. Reshma Shah, we reviewed dozens of social media campaigns that worked and dozens that didn’t work. During our analysis, we realized there were 10 primary causes of failed social media campaigns.
We came up with a checklist to help people identify which problems their social media campaigns were facing. I’ve included the checklist below. Which ones are you guilty of?
If you’re making more than 4 of these mistakes, you run the risk of having a social media campaign that won’t generate a positive ROI, which is a no-no.
With that in mind, here are the 10 most common social media mistakes you should avoid:
___ You don’t set clear objectives: Some companies create a Facebook page or a YouTube channel before thinking through their objectives. Is it to build awareness? To drive traffic to a landing page on your site? To give people a channel to make comments and record their frustrations? For more on this, read Setting Up a Social Media Campaign: A Step-by-Step Checklist on the 60 Second Marketer blog. It’s an older post, but it still has plenty of good tips.
___ You thought social media was only about Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube:Of course, social media is about having many conversations across as many platforms as you can manage. The more opportunities you provide customers to engage with you, the more successful your campaign.
___ You don’t measure the results of your campaign: Interestingly, this is an all-too-common problem. If you want learn how to measure the results of your social media campaigns, read Social Media ROI: How to Tell if Your Social Media Campaign is Making Money on the 60 Second Marketer blog.
___ You don’t know how to set up a landing page: One of basic models of social media success looks like this: prospect —> social media channel —> landing page on website —> new customer. If you don’t have a landing page on your website designed to convert prospects to customers, then you won’t be able to track your ROI. No ROI, no social media campaign. (Or, rather, no effective social media campaign.)
___ You don’t re-market to customer prospects: Most prospects who visit your landing page won’t become customers. In fact, the vast majority won’t. But that doesn’t mean they’re never going to buy. It just means they weren’t going to buy at that time. Keep ‘em in your pipeline – you’ll get them someday, if you re-market to them.
___ You don’t know how to turn a social media campaign into a sales and marketing campaign: Social media isn’t just about building awareness. It’s about turning prospects into customers. Don’t be shy about nudging prospects along the sales funnel. They expect it, to a certain degree.
___ You sat on the sidelines: True story – we were in contact with a creative director at a major advertising agency a while back who said, “this whole internet thing is just a flash in the pan and I can’t wait for it to blow over.” We’re serious. He said that. Our point? You don’t want to be that guy.
___ You downplayed the importance of social media: Some people don’t sit on the sidelines as much as they participate without passion. That’s almost as bad as sitting on the sidelines. You don’t want to be that guy, either.
___ You thought you could do social media in 10 minutes a day: Social media is a little like a marriage – you won’t have a successful marriage if you plan on spending just 10 minutes a day having a dialog with your spouse. The same holds true for a successful social media campaign.
___ You thought social media was like traditional marketing: There are a lot of similarities between social media and traditional media. But there are a lot of differences, too. Your job is to embrace those differences and use social media for what it is — a terrific customer relations tool that can also be a terrific revenue generating tool.
How many of the common mistakes listed above are you making? If you’re making more than 4 of these, you might want to hit the re-set button and fix things. By doing so, you’ll be in a better spot to use social media for what it is intended for — to generate revenue.
Posted by Jamie Turner, Founder of the 60 Second Marketer and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile.” He is also a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.