Businesses and their Use of Social Media
Countless businesses have entered the world of social media, and many small firms employ Facebook pages as a substitute for traditional websites. However, most companies fail to use these networks in ways that actually boost sales. This gives a major competitive advantage to business owners who employ genuinely effective techniques. To succeed at social media marketing, it’s crucial to avoid these five mistakes:
1. Businesses often create accounts on several different social media networks but never take the time to update them.
Aside from offering contact information, their social media profile pages serve little or no purpose. One problem is that some owners lack sufficient time to handle multiple social media accounts. It makes more sense to establish a single well-maintained Twitter or Facebook or even a LinkedIn company page, rather than several abandoned accounts with no recent posts.
2. Inconsistent or poor branding harms many companies.
Numerous firms set up social media profiles with lengthy URLs containing acronyms and abbreviations that hardly anyone can memorize. For instance, few customers will remember to type twitter.com/v-smith-hvac-inc. Another common problem involves using different colors, logos or brand-related images on each platform. There ought to be a sense of continuity between a firm’s website and its social media profile pages.
3. Many businesses neglect to post any insightful content.
As a result, potential customers show little interest in their social networking pages. It isn’t enough to merely publicize special offers, contests and job openings. Most readers want informative or entertaining material, as well. This content should appeal to a firm’s client base rather than its employees; few customers want to learn about staff parties or trips.
4. A lack of interaction causes some businesses to fail at social media marketing.
They post offers and company news but rarely respond to user comments. A page will become much more popular when staff members and customers frequently interact in positive ways. This probably won’t happen if a business devotes little time to monitoring comments and posting unique content.
5. The most fundamental mistake is a failure to dedicate any funds or staff to social media.
Some business owners still believe that social media is free advertising and involves little effort or complexity. In reality, no effective marketing campaign costs absolutely nothing. A company can only succeed in promoting themselves through social media if they are willing to spend money, take the time and provide the effort. Assigning social media management as a required task to specific employees is a great way to start.
The Bottom Line
Any Internet marketing project takes considerable effort; so businesses must not treat online promotion as an afterthought. If your firm has made some of the above-mentioned mistakes, it’s never too late to correct them to gain a competitive edge.
If you don’t have time to optimize all of your social media pages, decide how many you can maintain well, then choose the ones that will produce the best results for you. After all, it’s better to maintain a few social media profiles effectively, rather than doing a bunch of profiles poorly.
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Obviously, there are no guarantees of success; however, if you do the above, your chances for success are improved.
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Why not tell us about your own social media successes and failures and how that’s affected your business? Please do so, either in the comments below, or by submitting a guest post to us. We review these posts carefully, and as long as your contribution adds something to the entrepreneurial community we’d be happy to feature it on our site with a link back to yours!
