When social media marketing doesn’t work

When companies and organisations utilise the widespread use of social media effectively, the results can be phenomenal. You engage with customers, speak to potential new ones, use different creative methods to pull in interest and can control your image online at relatively low cost.

When social media doesn’t work though, it’s usually because the person in charge doesn’t know what works and what doesn’t. Some of the issues which regularly crop up are as follows:

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Image Credit: Sofiaperesoa via Wikimedia Commons

Erm… what’s social media?

If you have to ask what social media is and you work within a team that isn’t savvy to technology, your social media plan will fail. For starters, your company should already be social; you won’t survive in the digital age if you don’t at least have a website. Secondly, you need to understand which forms of social media are the most effective. For the record, it is a good idea to generate videos, infographics, set up accounts on social platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Tumblr, and directly seek out and conversing over social platforms,.

Inconsistency

No one likes an inconsistent company and this is a glaring flaw when making use of social media interaction. Let’s say you have been following the blog of your favourite independent jewellery maker on Etsy, and they posted every day for three weeks and disappeared for a month, wrote again every other day for two weeks and dropped off altogether – you’d lose interest. The quality of the work produced also needs to remain consistent. I mean in terms of social media output, rather than the product. Established goals should be maintained and worked towards, plans should be set up and roles distributed fairly to make sure social interaction is kept up. Always reply if you can. Keep up the effort.

Confidence in your product’s value

So here’s the thing: when you are not confident in your own value and what you have to say, it comes across in your writing on social media. The average person therefore won’t see value in your words either. Don’t be afraid of being anonymously attacked for what you have to say, because whether you are right or wrong is neither here nor there. Just be passionate about what you do, show conviction in your product, service, brand or job, and you’ll find that social engagement with the masses will come easier.

Where’s the personality?

No one wants to feel like they are talking to a faceless auto-bot when they interact with you over social media. So personalise your social media marketing strategy and use real team members in your ventures. Reply and create a dialogue with anyone who reaches out to you on a platform like Twitter, Facebook or in the comments below a blog post. Be useful and happy to help in any way. The web is far too big to win over everybody, but with a bit of personality you can draw like-minded individuals to your brand.

Cut out the rookie mistakes, and you’ll see a noticeable improvement on the results of your social media marketing strategy.

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