The Top 5 Ways to Hurt Your Business With Social Media
By Jessica Lynne Dawson
The Hard Sell
(My ad here. And here and here and here.)If we were to do a poll today of the top reasons people were un-friended on Facebook or lost followers on Twitter, right up there with breakups and too much personal information would be constant self-promotion. This can include (but certainly isn't limited to):
•Reminding all 800 of your followers that you are still selling advertising space/ renovating bathrooms/ training wild horses...several times a day, every day.
•Re-posting the same information about you, services or products on multiple friends' walls on multiple occasions.
•Mass-messaging pre-packaged content about you, services or products to all of your friends or followers. Regularly.
Are you the kind of person who would have no problem pitching the latest vitamin juice/pyramid scheme to your mother, or your neighbor, or your kids' softball coach? Are you the person people dodge at cocktail parties, networking luncheons, and get in the longer line at grocery stores to avoid? You are the person people are not connecting with on social media - or at least not for long.
Being A Bot (Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.)
Are you a representative or a robot? What are you there to do? If you are a representative of a company and your job is to sell something, you probably want to connect with people. This is done on a human level, which is why it is called social media.
There are services that you can use to link all of your social media sites together and update them all with a single click, or automatically from a feed or e-blast. There are services that allow you to prepare updates in advance and post those updates at specified times while you are, say, at lunch with your sister. But would you want to? If you are a fire department or a mobile lunch vendor, these might come in handy; but if you are representing an organization where an up-to-the-minute status is not nearly as important as relevant, quality information, you are simply going to have to update the old-fashioned way.
Over-sharing (Be authentic, but not too authentic.)
The main value of social media is its authenticity, the simple fact that you are connecting with other human beings whose ideas and contributions have worth. A social media site is an ongoing and ever-growing conversation within a changing community, and as in life in the non-virtual world, there are certain boundaries of acceptable sharing within that community.
It is difficult to balance being yourself while also putting your best professional foot forward. It's hard to remember sometimes, when in the networking mindset, that people like interesting people. Sharing your hobbies, your musical tastes or favorite books, and photos of interesting things you have done (your love of botanical gardens, your last canoeing trip, or the Star Trek convention you attended last week) are a good way to round out any representation of yourself. These are personal, but tell people who you are, and can be fantastic conversation starters.
On the other hand, intimate details of your relationships, photos of you really cutting loose on your last business trip, ten thousand photos of the new baby - these might not be the best material for a social media site that you use to network professionally. Then again, it really depends on your audience, which brings me to...
Random Audience Selection (You know what they say, "You can pick your friends...")
When you join a social media site, you will probably be bombarded with new friend/follower requests. If you have never used a social media site before, you may be flattered, and tempted to say yes to all of them. If you have a universal goal for your usage of these sites, please do not do this. Accepting these requests from just anyone is pointless for two reasons:
First, there are several types of friends you don't want to have, some of which we covered in the sections above. The bottom line is that there isn't any value in connecting with these people just because they ask.
Second, and most important, every friend you make becomes a part of your marketing plan, whether you realize it or not. Whether you are wasting valuable time reading regurgitated posts, learning something buzz-worthy from a leader in your field, or networking with someone who eventually brings you a new client is up to you.
Social Media as a Campaign (Free isn't usually your best option.)
It's frustrating to hear the words "social media campaign", and not because I think social media is ineffective. On the contrary, it can be an effective tactic - it got Betty White on as a co-host on an upcoming SNL, didn't it? And aren't retailers piling on the social media bandwagon by the thousand to offer special deals to their friends and followers with great results?
For non-consumer-based businesses, though, the results aren't as easy to measure. Social media is not the one-stop solution any more than print advertising, TV ad spots or any other one section of your overall marketing plan. It's important to consider the various social media sites as a step, not the ladder. No amount of tweets will make up for a non-functioning website or bad advertising strategy.
Think about what your ultimate goal is before you settle on which social media sites you want to use. Be careful not to spread yourself too thin - there's nothing worse than Twitter accounts left untended. Who do you want to connect with? What are their questions, and areas of interest? What's happening in your field this week? English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, "Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it." Maybe you can't invent the conversation, but surely you have an angle on it?
As marketers, we have been hard-wired to look at every conversation and every contact as a potential opportunity, and to ask ourselves what our ROI will be. In most situations that is beneficial to both our professional development and to our bottom lines, but social media is designed differently than the rest of our professional lives. These are places where you have to consider what your connections' ROI is; that is, what are you contributing to this community? Social media is a garden, not a supermarket, and you have to plant good seeds now if you want to eat well later.
Read more
(My ad here. And here and here and here.)If we were to do a poll today of the top reasons people were un-friended on Facebook or lost followers on Twitter, right up there with breakups and too much personal information would be constant self-promotion. This can include (but certainly isn't limited to):
•Reminding all 800 of your followers that you are still selling advertising space/ renovating bathrooms/ training wild horses...several times a day, every day.
•Re-posting the same information about you, services or products on multiple friends' walls on multiple occasions.
•Mass-messaging pre-packaged content about you, services or products to all of your friends or followers. Regularly.
Are you the kind of person who would have no problem pitching the latest vitamin juice/pyramid scheme to your mother, or your neighbor, or your kids' softball coach? Are you the person people dodge at cocktail parties, networking luncheons, and get in the longer line at grocery stores to avoid? You are the person people are not connecting with on social media - or at least not for long.
Being A Bot (Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.)
Are you a representative or a robot? What are you there to do? If you are a representative of a company and your job is to sell something, you probably want to connect with people. This is done on a human level, which is why it is called social media.
There are services that you can use to link all of your social media sites together and update them all with a single click, or automatically from a feed or e-blast. There are services that allow you to prepare updates in advance and post those updates at specified times while you are, say, at lunch with your sister. But would you want to? If you are a fire department or a mobile lunch vendor, these might come in handy; but if you are representing an organization where an up-to-the-minute status is not nearly as important as relevant, quality information, you are simply going to have to update the old-fashioned way.
Over-sharing (Be authentic, but not too authentic.)
The main value of social media is its authenticity, the simple fact that you are connecting with other human beings whose ideas and contributions have worth. A social media site is an ongoing and ever-growing conversation within a changing community, and as in life in the non-virtual world, there are certain boundaries of acceptable sharing within that community.
It is difficult to balance being yourself while also putting your best professional foot forward. It's hard to remember sometimes, when in the networking mindset, that people like interesting people. Sharing your hobbies, your musical tastes or favorite books, and photos of interesting things you have done (your love of botanical gardens, your last canoeing trip, or the Star Trek convention you attended last week) are a good way to round out any representation of yourself. These are personal, but tell people who you are, and can be fantastic conversation starters.
On the other hand, intimate details of your relationships, photos of you really cutting loose on your last business trip, ten thousand photos of the new baby - these might not be the best material for a social media site that you use to network professionally. Then again, it really depends on your audience, which brings me to...
Random Audience Selection (You know what they say, "You can pick your friends...")
When you join a social media site, you will probably be bombarded with new friend/follower requests. If you have never used a social media site before, you may be flattered, and tempted to say yes to all of them. If you have a universal goal for your usage of these sites, please do not do this. Accepting these requests from just anyone is pointless for two reasons:
First, there are several types of friends you don't want to have, some of which we covered in the sections above. The bottom line is that there isn't any value in connecting with these people just because they ask.
Second, and most important, every friend you make becomes a part of your marketing plan, whether you realize it or not. Whether you are wasting valuable time reading regurgitated posts, learning something buzz-worthy from a leader in your field, or networking with someone who eventually brings you a new client is up to you.
Social Media as a Campaign (Free isn't usually your best option.)
It's frustrating to hear the words "social media campaign", and not because I think social media is ineffective. On the contrary, it can be an effective tactic - it got Betty White on as a co-host on an upcoming SNL, didn't it? And aren't retailers piling on the social media bandwagon by the thousand to offer special deals to their friends and followers with great results?
For non-consumer-based businesses, though, the results aren't as easy to measure. Social media is not the one-stop solution any more than print advertising, TV ad spots or any other one section of your overall marketing plan. It's important to consider the various social media sites as a step, not the ladder. No amount of tweets will make up for a non-functioning website or bad advertising strategy.
Think about what your ultimate goal is before you settle on which social media sites you want to use. Be careful not to spread yourself too thin - there's nothing worse than Twitter accounts left untended. Who do you want to connect with? What are their questions, and areas of interest? What's happening in your field this week? English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, "Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it." Maybe you can't invent the conversation, but surely you have an angle on it?
As marketers, we have been hard-wired to look at every conversation and every contact as a potential opportunity, and to ask ourselves what our ROI will be. In most situations that is beneficial to both our professional development and to our bottom lines, but social media is designed differently than the rest of our professional lives. These are places where you have to consider what your connections' ROI is; that is, what are you contributing to this community? Social media is a garden, not a supermarket, and you have to plant good seeds now if you want to eat well later.
Read more
