5 Common Social Media Blunders and How to Avoid Them

Social media marketing for your business is tough enough without shooting yourself in the foot. Self-induced social faux pas are easy to commit, and difficult to overcome. Social media is not only necessary to include, but crucial to get right! Even though 74 percent of brand marketers saw an increase in website traffic after investing just 6 hours per week on social media, in contrast to another 83 percent have abandoned a purchase after a bad or non-existent customer service incident. (Creotivo.com)

So to help you ward off the mistakes that could be looming in your social media marketing, here are five social media mistakes you need to avoid!

1. Not engaging with your audience – Make sure you are actively engaging your social media audience. Seek advice, conduct polls, share funny stories (hopefully somewhat relevant) and ask their thoughts: they’ll gladly provide them, and you’ll be far wiser and nearer to your goals in a number of ways.
2. Lacking excitement or passion – If you’re not excited about your brand, it’s likely to be very difficult to get other people excited about it, either. Communicate this in your postings, and in your campaigns. Everybody wants to create a buzz about our businesses, but it starts with you!
3. Always promoting – Nobody wants to be constantly sold to, and social media is littered with companies that have tried. Endeavor to develop relationship and trust first, and after that it will be much easier to send an occasional selling message.
4. Not responding to your customers – There is no faster way to ruin whatever goodwill and respect you’ve developed in your brand than to ignore your customers. It’s way too easy to totally miss customers and prospects posting their concerns, questions or complaints on these very platforms! Don’t be that guy!
5. No plan for social media – Not having a strategy for your social media marketing is sort of asking for it to fail. You need to understand why you’re doing, and which platforms are ideal for you. (Not all are!)

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.