Share It!
There’s a lot that can go wrong on social media. Most mistakes are harmless, but when you do have a social media slip-up a worldwide audience is there to watch. While boring posts are forgivable some blunders can significantly impact the bottom line. From not having a plan to getting into a fight online here are some common social media mistakes your business could be making and easy tips to make sure they never happen again.
Failing to develop a social media strategy
This one might not look obvious to the average social media scroller, and that’s because without a social media strategy, those people are unlikely to see your posts anyway. To make sure your content is getting noticed by potential customers, you must develop a social media strategy for your business’ traction on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to soar.
One of the easiest updates to your business’s social media strategy is to have a goal for each of the social sites. Maybe it makes sense for you to leverage Twitter and Instagram to bolster brand awareness and use Facebook primarily for leads that are a bit more qualified. Or if you’re a business-to-business company or an organization looking to hire, you might quickly find LinkedIn to be your best friend. Whatever your business’s aspirations are, social media will help you achieve them and reach a better, more interested audience.
Social sites allow businesses to target specific users with relatively low-cost ads. Using the right targeting and custom audiences – even your own database – – turn your ads into helpful posts instead of irrelevant content because they’ll only be served to the audience you’ve identified as being interested in your products or services. Your results will be better too. For example, targeting Facebook users in the Phoenix area that are interested in buying an SUV will yield much better results than targeting car buyers in Arizona. Do your business a favor and develop a basic strategy.
Not speaking to the customer
Even though you now have a foundation for your business’s social media strategy, you’re still at risk for committing mistake #2: not engaging with your customers. Because your business now knows who it wants to target, your social content should speak directly to those individuals. In other words, don’t come off like a faceless business trying to appeal to everyone—speak directly to your customers. Use language and images that will captivate your unique audience and make them want to move further down the sales funnel. For more information on personalizing your social media marketing efforts, check out my March TechFlash article about improving your business’s human element here.
Ignoring negative feedback
I’ve mentioned this several times throughout my TechFlash series, but how you react to negative reviews, comments and posts about your business speaks volumes. Negative feedback should be viewed as an opportunity to improve processes and to show the social media world watching that customer satisfaction is important to you. Bad reviews definitely shouldn’t be ignored even if you know the complaint isn’t valid and the review is just from some unhappy soul venting, address the concern professionally and don’t get into a fight online.
What you should do when faced with negative feedback is to respond calmly in a way that addresses the customer’s concern. For example, if a customer had a not so great experience with your in-person sales staff, it’s helpful to apologize to the customer and take the conversation offline by providing your contact information and letting the reviewer know you’d like to speak to them to learn more about their concern. The last thing you want to do to resolve an online complaint is make an offer online for free services, discounts, and refunds as others might view writing a bad review as a way to get these same perks.
For more help and actionable tips specific to your business, visit digitalairstrike.com/get-intel to request a free, custom analysis of your business’ online presence.
