The idea of a free-to-use marketing tool that practically anyone with internet access can leverage can seem like a godsend in today’s digital marketing landscape – hence the continued appeal of social media marketing. Sadly, though, the low barriers to entry also mean easy-to-make blunders.
If you’ve been marketing your firm through social media for a while, you might have been guilty of the following no-nos without even realising it. Here’s a rundown of mistakes you can easily set right.
Behaving offensively or overly negatively
It’d be fair to say that some brands are built around controversy – but, in many instances, it would be wise to resist any temptation to follow suit. If you feel strong ownership of your brand, you might feel entitled to say whatever you like, but there’s a crucial difference between “can” and “should”.
Complaining, acting passive-aggressively or making thoughtless jokes risks you receiving backlash. Research suggests that negative attitudes on social media draw people away.
Automating too many of your social media posts
Automating your content can be a useful timesaver on social media. You can do it through such tools as Hootsuite and IFTTT, which can publish your blog posts to a pre-decided schedule and so free up time for you to spend on other aspects of the business.
At the same time, though, to foster engagement, you should regularly interact with your followers – and automation can’t always pick up the slack there. You are a person, not a machine!
Recruiting the wrong influencers
You might be familiar with the phenomenon of the influencer: a public figure, whether a celebrity, renowned expert or someone else, who vouches for your company’s offerings on your behalf. However, influencers you choose must be genuinely in tune with your brand’s values.
In 2012, popular American TV personality Oprah Winfrey enthused on Twitter about her Microsoft Surface tablet but, in a major PR gaffe, did so through Twitter’s iPad app. Whoops!
Failing to promptly reply to comments
According to research by Econsultancy, 53% of customers asking a company something on Twitter anticipate a reply within an hour. Therefore, you should closely monitor activity on your social channels to make sure you can pounce quickly when someone does ask a question.
Furthermore, according to the same research, an even higher 72% of complaining customers expect a response just that timely; it could certainly help to diffuse anger they might be feeling.
Not adhering consistently to your “brand voice”
This could too easily happen if you leave one person to handle your brand’s posts and interactions on social media while assigning other people to take care of your company’s website pages, blog posts and other, including offline, content. Your brand voice must be consistent across all of these!
Your brand voice is exactly that – the voice of your brand – and should strike a specific tone on which your customers could easily pick up over time. Our SEO packages could help you here; we offer a starter SEO package for web marketing novices.
