5 Ways to Ruin your Social Media Marketing

social media marketingThe internet today has dramatically changed when you compare it to even just a few years ago. It used to be we all focused on SEO and the power of backlinks we could get from others. In the end, our search engine ranking was the sole determinant of how much organic traffic we could attract to our sites. Now we have social media marketing available that has proven to be just as powerful at driving targeted traffic as SERPS.

Therefore, it behooves every online marketer to create some sort of social media presence. In fact, it is recommended that we establish at least one powerful channel on social media. In other words, pick one – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube – and then raise hell on that one channel and make it part of your online marketing brand.

The great news about social media marketing is that it is free to everyone. Therefore, this is why social media has become a behemoth in regards to finding large numbers of people online who share the same interests.

However, the drawback of social media traffic is that they have low attention spans compared to targeted organic traffic. Social media traffic is much harder to convert – you can get lots of clicks, but your bounce rates will go up dramatically.

5 Pitfalls of Social Media Marketing

So now let us examine some of the mistakes that are commonly made with social media marketing.

1) We Spread Ourselves way too Thin

If you have ever deal with social media accounts at all, then you have already learned how time consuming they can be. If you really want to establish an effective social media channel, then you have to engage with your audience and establish a community there with your brand. This takes time to accomplish – you can’t half-ass these actions.

The problem is that when you have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, G+, and Instagram, it requires a tremendous amount of time to build your online brand properly. This is why most experts recommend you only focus on one channel – or maybe two. Some people simply hire someone to manage their social media.

2) Ignoring People on Your Channels

While there are effective tools out there to schedule the posting of content, there are none that can properly interact and engage with your followers. There is one thing for sure – when people make comments and feedback on your social media channels, they must be addressed. Not addressing social media is much worse that not even have social media marketing channels in the first place. DO NOT ignore your customer base!!

3) Talking more than you listen

This is basically a rule of human courtesy. Just like in real life, never forget that our creator gave us two ears and only one mouth. We are always better off listening to others more than talking to them. I don’t know about some people – it’s like they believe that if they can out talk the other people, then perhaps they don’t have to worry about hearing bad news. WRONG! It means that your audience and your customers will leave you forever if you don’t listen to their concerns. So don’t be a fool.

4) All Talk and No Plans

Many marketers fall into the trap of thinking they are killing it on social media when they are yacking with people on their channel and engaging with them. That is good, but at some point, there needs to be a purpose for your communication on there. After all, you are trying to run an online business.

5) All Strategy and No Talk

This is the exact opposite of the last one, sometimes we can be too businesslike and we need to loosen up and interact more with our audience in a human and personal way. Never forget, they need to see your human side occasionally because they need to relate to you before they can follow you.

Summary

It is recommended that all online marketers be mindful of these 5 pitfalls when we are engaging in social media marketing. We can’t forget that people are on social media to relax and have fun in personal way. Thus, when we attempt to promote our online business on there, we are intruding and disrupting what they are trying to accomplish – never forget this fact.

Discover the 7 Benefits of Social Media

If you haven’t jumped into the social media buzz yet, then you must discover the 7 benefits of social media and why you must start using it now. And it really doesn’t matter if you are an individual or if you are a business, social networking will greatly enhance your life and your objectives.

However, if you happen to have a business, the benefits of social media are far greater. Even if you are a traditional brick and mortar business, then you are simply leaving money on the table because your potential clients today are going online to make their purchasing decisions – and they are doing it more and more as time goes on. Also, you are probably getting left behind by competitors who are already establishing a presence and influence in the cloud already.

If you are an individual and have yet to discover the 7 benefits of social media, then you are missing out on the ability to connect with dozens, if not hundreds of friends and colleagues. These connections extend your circle of loved ones, friends, and influence which will increase the quality of your life tenfold. When you are connected, you become more aware of events and things that you are most interested in – things that are very valuable to you.

Seven (7) Benefits of Social Media

Now that we have briefly discussed some of the reasons that both individuals and businesses should be enjoying the power of social media and even social media marketing, it is time to further examine  a few of its benefits. Keep in mind that after you discover the 7 benefits of social media, you will wonder why you didn’t beginning using it before now.

1) Grow a Huge Audience

social media audienceWhat many people do not realize is that when you use social media, you can grow a very large following in a short amount of time. And when you are aware of the hottest trends and biggest stories, and you start sharing those on your social media channels, it is only a matter of time before one of them goes viral (or partially viral) and attracts a huge number of followers. This is how social media works.

Even if you do not connect with a viral story, if you simply keep sharing good stories and pictures, you are going to attract a constant flow of new fans, friends, and followers. The key here is consistency. You have to be consistent to grow your channels.

The second thing you must do is use only the big social media sites. We are talking about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube (if you have the ability to make videos). I would recommend creating accounts with each of these, but concentrating your efforts on only one or two of them. Everybody has a preferred social channel, so just try them all out and find out which one suit you best. They are all very good and effective in their own way and will allow you to discover the 7 benefits of social media.

2) Instant Messaging

After you have built a sizeable following on your preferred social media channel(s), you have the ability to send out messages to tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people instantly. Just think for a moment how big your voice has become when you can do this.

And it is extremely realistic to grow this kind of following within months – depending on how much effort you have devoted to your channels. Even if you only spend a few minutes each day, you could easily have a following of 50 thousand or so within a year’s time. It depends on how consistently you are posting good content that your audience likes.

Imagine if you were able to have a call of action for your following and you could count of a given percentage of them to respond each time you ask. Do you not see the power and influence in this? It would be absolutely amazing!

The way in which your following responds to you depends on how you have interacted with them in the past. If you have tried to scam them a few times, then they probably will not respond much at all. But if you have been honest and real with them, and you have provided value to them – then they will probably respond very well to you.

3) Instant Feedback

customer feedbackWhen you have a huge following on your social media accounts, and you have cultivated a good relationship with them, you will have the ability ask many things of them. If you are thinking about posting a banner somewhere, or designing a book cover, you can ask them for input.

For instance, you could post two book cover mock ups and ask them which one they like. Or if you are writing a sales slogan or new tagline, you could ask them to choose among a few of them.

When you consider what corporations are paying for consumer inputs like this, you must realize how valuable it is to be able to get instant feedback from your following – for FREE! The value of this is simply off the charts. There are hundreds of people out there who have no clue how to utilize their massive social media followings. They have yet to discover the 7 benefits of social media marketing.

4) Building Your Brand

Obviously, this may apply more to businesses, but there are some individuals who are concerned about their brand as well. When you have a vested interest in promoting a brand and getting the word out there, you have no better ally than the power of social media.

One of the very first things you should do as a business is to create a set of social media accounts with all of the major social media sites. On each of these accounts, you should post the mission of your business, the slogan or tagline of your business, and finally the logo of your business.

After you have done the above, all you need do now is start posting content about what is happening in your business. Things like new products launches, new services, special offers, giveaways, and so forth. It is recommended that you allocated a healthy percentage of your advertising into promoting and building your social media channels as they have historically provided the biggest value of most forms of advertising.

5) Customer Input

For businesses, a huge reason for having an online presence is to demonstrate your willingness and your sincere concerns about your customers. This is what can happen when you allow your customers to provide input to you publicly online. The key here is how you handle those customers who have complaints. Many people do not want to address these issues publicly because of our human nature to avoid uncomfortable or unpleasant situations.

You have to realize that these customer complaints represent an enormous opportunity for you and your business. Because when customers complain online, there are many eyes watching your response. If you demonstrate that you truly care about the happiness of your customers, this increases your reputation dramatically.

Do not underestimate online reputations. There are companies who are literally paying online reputation specialists thousands of dollars every single month to repair their Internet reputations. This is a very valuable thing – so do not ignore unhappy customers, instead respond to them quickly and offer them value and restitution. As you discover the 7 benefits of social media marketing, you may find this one of the most valuable.

6) Increases your Authority

Becoming an authority in your market or niche is pretty much the pinnacle for the objective of any business or person. The critical aspect of authority is that you do not get to decide if you are an authority, the ultimate opinion of that depends on your audience and your clients – both existing and potential.

However, the good news here is they only have to “perceive” you as an authority. And to be perceived as an authority requires that you become a big part of the conversation and the buzz about your niche or market. Whenever people follow your niche online and they constantly see you as part of the conversation, they are going to eventually consider you to be an authority of that market – any person would naturally assume that to be the case.

The only thing you have to do is begin acting like an authority.  This means you begin observing the other authorities in your market. Study them and learn how they are managing their social media accounts. Take note of the content that they are sharing with their audience and how often. Take note of the products and services that they are offering and what special offers they post on their social media. Now start mimicking their habits, but do not copy them – you must alter your approach in order to make it unique – but use their methods as a guide. This is one of the quickest things you can take advantage of as you discover the 7 benefits of social media marketing.

7) Drive Website Traffic

Many online marketers will tell you that this is their major reason for establishing an online presence using social media sites. They will tell you that this is why social media is a MUST for anyone who does anything online. The reason is we can use the big audiences and followings on our social media accounts to drive insane amounts of traffic to our main blogs or websites.

Most of the time, business (and even individuals) will have a main blog or website from which we deliver our primary message. This message could mean offering products and services, pushing a political and community message, or even raising money for a worthy cause. Our blog or website is the platform from where all of this occurs.

And we can drive this message using our massive social media presence. With many of our social media postings, we add a link one of our webpages – we can add links to the videos on our webpages. And as our social media following grows, then so will the amount of traffic to our websites and blogs. And the beautiful thing is that each of these social media sites has the ability to send lots of traffic to your desired destination.

You can use Twitter to blast out a quick message or post, while Facebook provides the ability to post a more detailed message.  When you have incredible pictures and images to share you can use Pinterest, or you could use Instagram, which is known for its extremely high engagement levels. Finally, there’s YouTube which gives you a platform for posting (and hosting) your videos. Never forget that YouTube is the second biggest search engine out there – second only to Google, who owns YouTube as well.

How could anyone overlook this benefit as they discover the 7 benefits of social media?

BONUS Benefit – Powerful Backlinks

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), there is nothing more valuable than getting powerful backlinks. This allows us to get favorable rankings in the search engines for our targeted keywords. And when our rankings get high enough, we stand to receive enormous amounts of organic traffic from people who are using the search engines.

The awesome thing about this traffic is that it is extremely targeted and therefore we can expect higher conversions (and sales) from these visitors. And this great traffic comes to our webpages totally FREE of charge!

Can life get any better than this? Getting traffic that highly converts without spending a dime? This is the beauty of getting organic traffic and a very good reason why we discover the 7 benefits of social media marketing.

One of the things that lets us rank for our keywords are getting powerful backlinks. And backlinks that have both authority and quality are the very best to get. This is what the social media sites provide for us – high quality backlinks. Whenever we fill out our profiles on those sites, they allow us to post a link to our main website.

In fact, several of the main search engines today are actually looking for backlinks from the major social media platforms as they consider where to rank our webpages. This is a huge reason why we need to discover the 7 benefits of social media today.

Start Build Social Media Profiles Now

If you have not starting doing so, then it is highly recommended that you begin creating your social media presence right away. Hopefully, the words above have provided compelling evidence for the value of powerful and consistent social networking. So we urge you to discover the 7 benefits of social media marketing.