5 Common Social Media Blunders and How to Avoid Them

Social media marketing is often a terrific way to engage, find and sell new clients on your business, but only if you aren’t prone to making it harder on yourself. Social media blunders are extremely easy to step into, and really messy to emerge from. Social media is essential to do correctly! Creotivo.com reports that a full 74 percent of brand marketers saw an increased web traffic after putting in a mere 6 hours per week on social media, while a whopping 83 percent have actually discontinued a purchase after a negative customer service occurrence.

So in the interest of not having that occur to your business, allow me to share…

Five common social media mistakes to be sure you avoid!

1. No engagement with your people –This is “social media”. Ask questions, share humorous anecdotes (relevant) and by all means, ask for their opinions. They will provide them to you, and you can now use this data in your business.
2. Lacking excitement or passion – If you’re not excited about your brand, it’s going to be very hard to get other people passionate about it, either. Communicate this in your postings, and in your campaigns. We all want to create a buzz about our businesses, but it begins with you!
3. Constant promotion – Nobody wants to be constantly pitched to, and there is no place this is more true than in social media. Once you’ve developed a relationship and trust, it will be much easier to insert the sporadic (soft) selling message.
4. Not responding to your customers – There is no faster way to destroy whatever goodwill and respect you’ve created in your brand than to ignore your customers. It’s way too easy to completely miss customers and prospects posting their concerns, questions or complaints on these very platforms! Don’t be that guy!
5. No coherent social media strategy – Lacking, or not knowing why, you’re using social media is a recipe for floundering, and wasting a great deal of money and time. Moreover, not every business is well-suited to every platform, so give this some thought.

We would be remiss if we didn’t share a link to a glaring example of what NOT to do! After the recent Boston marathon bombing, the food site Epicurious sent out a couple of unfortunate tweets.