How to Avoid These 7 Common SOCIAL MEDIA Mistakes

What has always been the simplest way to generate home based business? Referrals from existing customers with their friends and families.

Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both least expensive and most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only one 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. No one under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers can make a purchasing decision using the input of family and friends.

Social media marketing supplies the electronic platform for word of mouth marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The common Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets go out each week. YouTube has over 100 million views each day. The prospect of your message to be spread by raving fans is more frequent today through social media marketing than any other time in the annals of business. Can your company afford not to participate in this marketing revolution?

If you’re like me, you learn from making mistakes. However, if you can learn from the mistakes of others, then you will achieve success quicker. So why not study from the mistakes of others? Below are a few common mistakes new marketers make when trying to create and implement a social media marketing plan:

I’ll figure it out when i go- the biggest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without the plan. Take the time to get educated on social networking sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you understand a site, learn all the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very time consuming and will result in many business owners abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of setting up these site, understand the various options, and spend your time engaging rather than fixing problems. You can find good online educational programs out there that can teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media plan.

Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to go out and create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at once. But the problem with this particular strategy is that should you grow too fast, you will not be able to keep up with all the great things about each site. The best approach is to create one site, like Facebook, learn the facts and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, take part in events, and build relationships others. If you start up 12 at once, you will not be as active and your insufficient participation could defeat your overall goal. It’s better to have one or two 2 completely utilized social networking sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.

Profiles don’t matter- users of social media won’t engage with individuals who don’t possess complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will see you before they find your website. If they find your website and you also have a pic of your logo, no pic, or very little personal information, then they will likely ignore you. Your profile can be your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most importantly, be personable.

Here’s the pitch- here’s the biggest stumbling block for some beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This sort of media is really a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try out this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield the same failed results. Instead of selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself as an expert in the field where you are practicing. For example, if you are an agent, instead of promoting yourself and your site, educate homeowners on what they can do to market a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By providing valuable information, you’ll become an expert about them. Then, when the reader is preparing to sell her or his house, they will probably ask for your services.

Same method of communication- not everyone receives information through the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, plus some people will be attracted to pictures on your site. The main element is to mix up the way you post. If you to put it simply out a blog every day, your followers can be blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. If you have a blog one day, then put up a straightforward video another. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you will achieve.

Personal Development and valleys- be consistent in your social media activity. This doesn’t imply that you have to make posts multiple times each day. But if your goal would be to make 30 Facebook posts per month, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post per day than 3 days with 10 posts.

Take action all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to truly have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I would use to communicate with people. Having to log into multiple accounts every day to check the emails became annoying, frustrating, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to time consuming to get this done and I hardly ever used my email. However, once I learned to load most of my email accounts into Outlook, I was able to efficiently check and make use of the benefits of email. The same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log off of 5 different social media sites each day, it’ll become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools which will allow you to log into your entire social media accounts for interactions may be the best way to ensure that you consistently implement your social media plan. Again, there are some good all-in-one social media marketing dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner seeking to create a social media marketing plan for your business, then you absolutely should learn how to use the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. If you don’t know how to build a house and you don’t possess a hammer, that house isn’t likely to get built. By taking the steps listed above in this article, it will be easy to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media marketing plan.