Social Media Marketing and SEO: Mistakes to Avoid

Reaching your target audience has never been easier. With Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, you can now gain a following from among your existing and potential customers while they are in front of a desktop computer, during their commute to work or during their down times while they are using their smartphones.

These social networking sites that are now so easily accessible let you establish and build relationships with your customers, promote events and products and reinforce your brand’s image. However, social media is something you also need to handle with care.

Remember, negative publicity is more difficult to manage. It’s like trying to put out a forest fire when there are a bunch of rabid critters running around with torches tied on their tails. Once a boo-boo in the nebulous world of the Internet, it is quite hard to take something back. If you’re lucky, you are able to delete a post. However, the general rule is that the more juicier your mistake, the more likely it is that someone has taken a screen shot of it before you have taken it out of circulation. Once someone has a screen shot of your mistake, you lose control of it. It will more likely go into the list of the “Top 10 Internet Boo-boos brands make” or something of that sort.

As they say, prevention is better than cure. It is easier to avoid mistakes than to try and fix them. So, here are some of the mistakes you need to avoid when using Social Media Marketing:

• Getting into a fight. No matter how tempting it is to reply in a snarky, sarcastic and even belligerent manner, don’t. Don’t go into the dark side, my friend! Doing so will generally be bad for your brand. Let us first divide negative reactions and comments into two types of audiences. There are trolls, and there are customers with complaints. The general rule with trolls is this: “Don’t feed them.” Trolls get some satisfaction when they are able to successfully provoke a negative response from you. Thus, it is best to simply ignore trolls who try to hi-jack a conversation. However, the second type of audience, the customers with complaints, do deserve a response. If they have a problem with your product (i.e. malfunctions, questions about how to use the product), answer them politely and professionally. You can direct them to tutorials you have available in your website. You can directly answer their questions. You can refer them to the nearest service center. By actively responding to resolve issues, you show that you are committed towards providing your customers the service they need and expect.
• Treating social media as a one-way street. Your social media account is not simply for you to post events and sales or to promote your products. With your social media account, you are inviting your customers to engage and communicate with you. When you ignore comments made on a post, your customers may take it that you are not really interested in their input towards the conversation.
• Not having a solid strategy. When you first enter into the social media scene, do so with a firm knowledge of what you want to achieve. For one, you need to be committed towards providing relevant and interesting content. Work towards giving your followers something to think about, some help with the products they bought, the latest news about your industry, or simply, something to smile about.
• Using the same content across all networks. While recycling is good for the environment, recycling social media content across all networks will be bad for your brand. Remember, the people who follow you will usually have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. If you simply post the same content, you are losing out on a lot of opportunities. Rather, you need to “tweak” and redesign based on what is suitable for a certain platform. For instance, you can make use of catchy one-liners to promote your events using Twitter. You can invite discussion and promote a content using Facebook. You can also use a lengthy video for YouTube while revising the story and video to fit Snapchat users.
• Going whole hog without considering resources. How much manpower can you assign for your social media promotions? If you have limited resources, it is best to start with only one or two social media networks. This way, your team can focus on creating content and managing that account.
• Not getting the balance between hard-sell and “none-sell”. The reason why you have your social media account is for you to increase awareness for your products and brand. Thus, you need to have relevant posts that meet this goal. However, you also do not want to come out as being “hard-sell”, where the only content that they see are your promotions. As a general rule of thumb, provide 80% interesting and engaging content and 20% product and call-to-action content. So, even as you work to lead people to your website, have them sign up for a newsletter or invite them to your latest sale, be sure to provide more helpful tips for the day, quotes from related resources, a joke that can bring a smile to their day or a video tutorial about how they can do something better.
• Stubbornly sticking to your guns. Now, if you have made a mistake, do not try to cover up and deny it. It will be best to own up to a mistake and apologize to your followers. You will even gain some measure of respect for this.

About Adaptivity Pro

Running your social media accounts can be challenging, especially for first-timers or small companies. If you are a bit shorthanded or need a more solid social media strategy and implementation plan, we are the Utah SEO experts you can call. With their roster of experienced SEO analysts and social media mavens, Adaptivity Pro offers you years of experience and social media savvy. Aside from this, we also provide other internet-related services such as Utah web design, e-mail marketing and Internet marketing.