5 MAJOR Mistakes Businesses tend to make when using social m

[nparker]

Many organizations make the mistake of activating pages and signing up without a real strategy, in an effort to join the Social Media-sphere.

Social Mediums are not marketing ‘tools’... companies who have found success get that.

They understand that its all about conversations and that word of mouth is the most trusted method of referral.

So in essence this is all about what strategy is best suited to get into those conversations and have influence.

There must be solid strategy in place first - Each tool has a specific purpose in each given context.

Here are 5 very important tips to adhere to when engaging in Social media for your business:

1. Update your page frequently - A huge mistake that alot of companies make when setting up a fan page or twitter account for their company is that they create the page, invite everyone they know, then leave it stagnant for months on end. People, and in particular your clients or customers, do not want to associate themselves with a brand or business that doesn't offer them any insight or benefit for that association.

2. Incetivize your page - Try and come up with something to offer your fans or followers as a 'Thank You' gesture that will not only get them excited about your company, but that will in turn promote it to their contacts aswell! Contests, coupons, and free samples are some great ways to do so, BE CREATIVE!

3. Engage in the conversation - Engaging with your fan or follower is the cornerstone in utilizing Social Media platforms. The purpose of Social Media Marketing is to create a dialogue and not a monologue. Many businesses make the mistake of not listening or participating to their customers' queries or concerns. In this new dialogue brands win by monitoring, assessing & shaping the flow of conversation
* Don't censor
* Engage
* Discuss
* Listen to your consumers
* Analyze and adjust accordingly

4. Purchase some facebook ads - An incredible way to promote your Fanpage to your target demographic is to allocate some money towards Facebook media buys. Facebook offers in depth analysis and provides recommendations on how to improve your ads along the way and there is no better way to grab the attention of the exact group of people you want to promote to. A recent Hotspex study on Facebook fans measured their value by 5 variables :
1) Product spending, 2) Brand loyalty, 3) Propensity to recommend, 4) Brand affinity, and 5) Earned value - With the results of the study, Sycapse placed the average value of a fan today at $136.38 USD!

5. Unify all of your marketing campaigns - An area that I see alot of businesses, both small and big forgetting is synchronizing all of their marketing efforts, including both online and offline media.
Take a look at your company's website, are your 'become a fan on facebook' and 'follow us on twitter buttons' front and center? Are all of your new promo videos featured on not only your youtube channel but also on your fanpage? Are you offering exclusive deals to only your Twitter followers and not your Facebook fans?
You must realize that some of your consumers are on Facebook and others are on Twitter, make sure you're drawing attention to all your marketing efforts THROUGH one another respectively.

[jondyer]

Great 1st post Noah! Love it!

Mind if I add an additional step...?

6) Benchmark targets and measure your ROI (where possible)!

Cheers,
Jon

[Mahesh]

Kudos for a really intriguing post .
Along with unifying all the Onpage and Offpage marketing campaigns, "Diversifying and Tracking" the social media is also improtant. Never limit yourself to two or three social media/Networking sites, keep exploring the web and create more opportunities by reaching out to diverse group of people which can help us target social media campaign in a better way.

[jay]

[douglas]

This post is really an insight how should the business people use their face book account for business promotion. If it is not applied well it will rather cause negative impact.