Alert Marketers! Are You Making Mistakes on Social Media?

By Eridana Ai

If you are a digital marketing professional, you probably are familiar with social media marketing. But do you know that there are mistakes you might be making that could have a negative impact on your brand? As a master candidate in Medill IMC Program concentrating in direct and interactive marketing, I strongly recommend that you read the following two articles to avoid possible social media mistakes. 

"The 7 Biggest, Counterintuitive Social Media MistakesYou May be Making" alerts you on several common mistakes made on social media and instructs you on the correct ways of managing social media marketing. The tips include the best time to publish posts and the steps to take in order to avoid measurement overwhelm. 

"Top 10 Things You Should Never Do on Twitter" focuses on communications via Twitter. It highlights some of the things you should not do with your Twitter messaging—for instance, using too many hashtags in your posts. The tips given in the article teach you how to be successful in marketing your business and grabbing consumer attention through Twitter.   

Based on the articles and my previous experience in building social media presence for clients, here are three action items that I suggest you put on your to-do list:

1. Review past content—When people find you on social media platforms, the first thing they do is likely to be looking over your history of posts and shares. Now that you’ve learnt about the social media mistakes to avoid, you should certainly go back to your accounts and check if you’ve made any of them in the past one or few months. Don’t worry about the posts older than one year though as people normally would not dig that deep.

2. Establish standards—Having just read the articles, you now have a clear understanding of the do’s and don’ts about social media marketing. But be careful. Memories may not last long and you would probably forget about these tips and run into the risk of upsetting your followers/fans again in the future. To prevent that from happening, you should start to establish your own social media communication standards and make sure you follow them through. If you are a CMO or a marketing director, you might also want to consider establishing common standards for your fellow workers.

3. Keep your ears open—Social media industry is changing rapidly and continuously. To keep up with time and competition, you need to have an open ear and be keen to the changes, updates and trends. What is the norm now may not be norm forever. So be ready to modify your social media outreach strategy frequently as you move on.

Be aware folks—your competitors are ahead of you not because they are way smarter but because they are more prepared. Marketing through social media is cost-effective, interesting but not always easy. It requires careful planning and consistent effort. The good news is that the online platforms make it convenient for you to correct the mistakes you have made and prevent yourself from falling over again. So why not start acting now?

Eridana Ai is a graduate student studying Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University with a focus on social media marketing and marketing analytics. Her prior work experience in finance industry and project experience in online marketing enable her to bridge the gap between the science of data analytics and the art of marketing. Feel free to connect with her @eridana_ai on Twitter or via LinkedIn. 

Source:

http://blog.bufferapp.com/7-big-social-media-mistakes-and-the-counterintuitive-advice-that-can-help-you-avoid-them

http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/1916-top-10-things-you-should-never-do-on-twitter

Photo:

http://healyourlifeforever.com/i-made-a-terrible-mistake-nobodys-perfect/

http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/1916-top-10-things-you-should-never-do-on-twitter