Back in 2004 when Facebook launched I doubt many businesses were thinking, “Wow! This sounds like a great way for us to advertise our product.” It was way too small and pretty much every other kind of social media platform was struggling to get off the ground. In 2013 Facebook make more than $1.5 billion in profits and a good portion of that money came from those businesses advertising on the platform. Some brands like Clairol, Bing and Bud Light have had some great success with their Facebook ads thanks to some creativity and understanding what is relevant to their customers. They are the angels of Facebook advertising and, wherever there are angels there have to be demons. Demons that live off of the sins of social media advertising. The worst part is that people may be committing these sins unintentionally (because social media is a relatively new phenomenon). To reduce the number of brands who may be unintentionally sinning, we have put together a list of common social media marketing sins. And, if you find yourself committing some of them it may be time to seek out professional help.
1. Not Thinking Before You Post
With the death of comedian’s Robin Williams and Joan Rivers as well as the massive leak of celebrity photos over the past few weeks there have been quite a few social media marketing blunders. While a blunder may occur here and there we would hope that the blunder is one of punctuation or grammar and not one of offensive content. Offending potential customers may make your brand memorable but it could also send your business careening into the deep end (which can be a tricky place to get out of). Anytime you post you should be thinking about your target audience and what they want to see, not what will get you trending (no matter how tempting that may be).
2. Not Responding Promptly to Customer Complaints
Customers on platforms like Twitter that stress engagement typically expect a business to respond to their complaint within 30 minutes. Any longer than that and you risk alienating that customer. Responding promptly to consumer complaints will be a full time job and if you cannot afford to set aside that time you may want to consider hiring a social media marketing team to handle your social media assets.
3. Do Not Try to Make Your Social Strategy a One Size Fits All Strategy
There exists quite a variety of social media platforms out there on the Internet and, like people, they all of their own unique characteristics. Different people will frequent different sites and because of that you will have to alter your strategy dependent on who is accessing which platform and what demographic they fall in. If you do not have time to analyze who your target audience is or which platforms they tend to frequent then hiring a social media marketing team should be in your future. We can utilize our analytics tools to find out when to post, what to post and who may be watching the various social media platforms that your brand is on. If you notice your brand committing any of these sins then you could be losing out on quite a few potential customers and quite a lot of profit. We would be more than happy to meet with you, come up with a social media strategy that works best for your business and manage your accounts. It will give you more time to spend on your business and less time worrying about your company’s social media assets. If you would like to schedule a consultation or have any further questions please feel free to give us a call at 516-535-5353 or e-mail us at sales@fatguymedia.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
