- Going in Blind
First and foremost, your business’s social media should have a strong outline of goals and objectives that you hope to gain in return for your efforts. Whether it be to raise awareness for your brand, increase traffic to your site or even simply to hear what others are saying, setting up clear expectations will bring attainable value to your social media efforts.
Many businesses underestimate how hard it can actually be to leverage an effective social media effort. Social media takes time and without a solid plan or direction of where you would like to go, you may be wasting valuable time and resources.
- Taking the One-Size Fits All Approach
There are a number of different social media management tools out there like Sprout Social and HootSuite to help manage, measure and improve your social media efforts online. These tools, when used properly can provide a great deal of insight across all the various platforms in one easy to use dashboard.
They can also make it very easy to set-up scheduled posts for those times when you might not be available or have time to send out a post. However, auto-posting can also have its pitfalls, including appearing bot-like, running the risk of not being available to respond, and using it as a way to create the allusion that you are on all the various platforms.
Social media management tools are just that – a tool – and should not be used as your primary resource for implementation. Although this concept has been hammered into everyone’s head by now, it is still important to mention that not all platforms are created equal and what works on one may not necessarily work on another.
Therefore, auto-posting, although useful on platforms like Twitter where it is important to keep up a consistent posting schedule of several posts per day, may deter people who begin seeing the same posts on all your platforms.
- Simply Being There to Create Noise
Another common pitfall of using social media for business is the idea that as long as you are posting and posting on a frequent basis, that your business is using social media effectively. However, if your business is not taking the time to listen and engage with other users, you are simply creating noise and missing out on the chance to actually connect and build a relationship with your target audience.
Although listening may take more time in the short-term, it makes for a much more effective social media plan in the long-term and also ensures that you are talking about things that others within your target audience are currently interested in. Keeping these three things in mind, social media can be an extremely powerful way to interact with customers through your brand
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