Social media has been generating quite a buzz since a while and anyone who is online has witnessed its power in some way atleast. Social media offers another effective medium to communicate to a large audience, just like offline media.
It has been gaining rave popularity and is responsible for reaching out to a larger audience in a far lesser time. But there are some practices that could equally negate the popularity that your business can gain through social media.
Let’s look at some of the common mistakes on Social Media and what we should do to counter it.
Just Looks, not enough: Dressing up your social media page is just not enough these days. Great design will be good for some time but what has a greater impact is the kind of content you post. Always post material which is relevant and useful to your audience.
Miss me not: You need to be active on your social media space. Regularly updating content, replying to comments are some basics that you must do at all times. Social Networks have become a great medium to connect with your audience and larger companies even have resources dedicated to handle these tasks on a daily basis.
Jog, Don’t Run: Space out your content well. Give them time to go through each of your posts. If the content is good then you will find some engagement on your page as well. Overload of posts and tweets may look more like spam to your audience than real information. You don’t want your own audience reporting you as spam.
Count me in: When you’re building your business, always keep social media as a crucial part of it. Remember that this is a new age marketing system and you can target a larger audience than some of the conventional marketing methods. Do it right and you will reap the benefits.
I am the only One: This is one of the most common mistakes in social media space. Indeed Social Media is a great platform to display yourself or your brand, but you need to use it wisely. Your main focus is to help your users and engage with them. If you talk too much only about yourself or just advertise your product then the whole purpose of Social media is completely lost. Use it to make people aware and not to just sell.
Hear Bad, See Bad but don’t Talk: Never talk bad about your competitors, no matter how tempting it gets. Talking against another brand will only leave a bad taste for all your audiences to deal with. It’s much like the soft drink advertisement wars in the late 90’s where they took turns to mock at each other and the main purpose of the product was lost.
Love thy people: Social sites are built to connect with people and the worst thing that you can do is to not reply to their comments or complaints. This is even worse than not adding any content to the social pages. It shows how much you care for your fans and your brand.
Stay Calm: There are times when you just want to vent out your frustration against a comment or criticism against you. You should rather empathize with your users and understand what is the core of the problem. If things get too tense then its best to take the conversation on personal messages. Remember that the social media space is very sensitive and should be handled with extra care.
Invest time: There are a bunch of new sites that are catering to diverse groups of people and are growing in popularity. It is always advisable to invest some time in understanding if these new sites have the potential to target your specific audience. Remember that if you commit to a social networking site, then you will have to also invest an equal amount of time to update them.
Engage Everyone: Big brands usually have a split audience. Some form their core customers and some are affiliates and other partners. It’s important to engage all sets of your audience. This, actually ties in with our earlier point about using social media to truly communicate with your audience and not just sell your product. Focusing on end customers is great but focusing Only on end customers is not. Introducing variety in your posts is an awesome way to keep your audience engaged and interested.
Well the list goes on, but these are some of the most important pointers that you need to take care of, while using the social media space. You will learn the tricks of the trade, the more you learn how best each social networking site works. It is also really good to track other companies and understand how they work on their social media space. There is always some learning you can take back.
We would love to hear about what you think about this article. Do leave a comment below if you have anything to share.
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