It's time to learn from the past, move forward, and start increasing your engagement and adding to your bottom line with these ten steps (you can always watch the video!)
Lack of a strategy
- Old strategy of throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks
- Not knowing the "Voice" you want to present
- Showcase your personal side (e.g. your culture)
- Continuing to do things that are not working
- Not showing yourself as an expert
- Measuring ROI the Wrong Way
- Cannot be measured in the short term
- Not using analytics
- Looking at "Likes"
- It is better to have a few hundred followers that love your product/service and buy than millions that don't buy
Believing social media will solve all your problems
Not Using Software
- Facebook will not be around forever (remember: Myspace, AOL, or Google+?)
- Not utilizing social media software
- Scheduling and posting at the right time (which changes)
- Keeps you OFF social media
- Great solutions: Hootsuite, Buffer, Social Pilot
Platforms
- Wrong platforms
- Too many platforms
- Same message on all the platforms (e.g. Crossposting)
- Treating each platform the same
- Incomplete profiles
- Remember social is a two-way street
- This is not radio, television, or print ads
Not knowing your customer
- Not knowing who your true customer is
- Not answering your customers questions
- Know your customers pain points and frustrations
- Don't ignore them. Reply to them. Engage with them.
- Automated messages
- Sending automated messages to all of your followers (e.g. Twitter [DM] Direct Messages)
Being a stalker
- Leads don't follow, stop following every step your competition is doing and lead
- Copying what your competitor is doing – they are probably copying you!
- Stop comparing yourself to others
Following
- Following too many people
- Following the "wrong" people
Thinking social media is "Free"
- Think of all your costs
- Your time (or your outsourced time)
- Time to create
- Not making social media a priority, inadequate time
Inviting all your friends to a page to show "magic" of growth
- Many will drop off which will decrease your reach and make the algorithm feel your value may not be up to par, even if it is.
- Only invite those you know will "benefit" from your product or service. The others will come naturally
- Better technique is to invite NONE and to share on your page (every once in a while) and your friends will then join when they see a benefit to them, not you.
- This will make an engaged person rather than just a "statistic" to "impress"
Posting
- Too much
- Too little
- Inconsistently
- Inappropriate content
- Sounding Impersonal or automated
- Not using the 70/20/10 rule
- 70% informative / original content
- 20% pulling from other industry leaders
- 10% sales
- Wrong content
- Pushing Sales
- When pushing sales not having a measurable call to action
- Build a relationship
- Comments
- Deleting/ignoring negative comments
- Not taking negative comments "offline" and trying to do it online
- Boosting rather than creating more targeted ads / re-targeting campaigns
- Don't post political (unless you are a politician and then keep it clean and
non-attacking – informative)