How to prevent These 7 Common SOCIAL MEDIA Mistakes

What has always been the simplest way to generate new business? Referrals from existing customers to their friends and families.

Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both least expensive and most productive form of advertising. Most people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only one 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. No one under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers will make a purchasing decision in line with the input of friends and family.

Social media marketing provides the electronic platform for referral marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is linked to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets go out every week. YouTube has over 100 million views per day. The potential for your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media marketing than any other time in the history of business. Can your organization afford not to participate in this marketing revolution?

If you are like me, you learn from making mistakes. However, when you can learn from the mistakes of others, then you will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Here are a few common mistakes new marketers make when trying to create and implement a social media marketing plan:

I’ll figure it out when i go- the biggest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without the plan. Take time to get educated on social networking sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you learn a site, learn all the benefits of the website. Correcting mistakes is very frustrating and will lead to many companies abandoning their plan and walking away from the strategy. Instead, learn the fundamentals of setting up these site, understand the different options, and spend time engaging rather than fixing problems. You can find good online educational programs on the market that are designed to teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media plan.

Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to venture out and develop a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this strategy is that should you grow too fast, you won’t be able to match all the great things about each site. The very best approach is to create one site, like Facebook, learn the details and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, take part in events, and build relationships others. If you set up 12 at once, you will not be as active and your insufficient participation could defeat your current goal. It’s easier to have 1 or 2 2 completely utilized social media sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.

Profiles don’t matter- users of social media marketing won’t engage with people who don’t have complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will find you before they find your website. If they find your site and you also have a pic of your logo, no pic, or very little personal information, then they will likely ignore you. Your profile is your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most of all, be personable.

Here’s the pitch- here’s the biggest stumbling block for some beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This kind of media is a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try out this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield the same failed results. Rather than selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself being an expert in the field where you are practicing. For example, if you are an agent, instead of promoting yourself and your site, educate homeowners on which they can do to market a house themselves. The truth is, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By providing valuable information, you’ll become an expert on the subject. Then, when the reader is ready to sell her or his house, they will most likely ask for your services.

Same approach to communication- not everyone receives information through exactly the same medium. Some people prefer to read, others like video, and some people will be attracted to pictures on your site. The main element is to mix up how you post. If you to put it simply out a blog each day, your followers will become blind to your communication method. Change Luxury Travel Experiences up a little. In case you have a blog 1 day, then put up a simple video the next. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you will achieve.

Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media activity. This doesn’t mean that you must make posts multiple times every day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts monthly, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post per day than 3 days with 10 posts.

Do it all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to talk to people. Needing to log into multiple accounts every day to check on the emails became annoying, time consuming, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to frustrating to do this and I seldom used my email. However, once I learned to load all of my email accounts into Outlook, I could efficiently check and make use of the benefits of email. Exactly the same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log from 5 different social media marketing sites each day, it will become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools which will enable you to log into all your social media makes up about interactions may be the easiest way to make sure that you consistently implement your social media plan. Again, there are some good all-in-one social media dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner looking to create a social media marketing plan for your business, then you absolutely should educate yourself on how to use the technology and find tools to work with you in the daily utilization. Unless you know how to build a house and you don’t have a hammer, that house isn’t going to get built. By firmly taking the steps listed above in the following paragraphs, it will be possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media plan.