What NOT to do in Social Media

Social media marketing strategies take planning. In order to have successful conversations with customers, you will need to dedicate a lot of time connecting to them, interacting with them and engaging with audiences in the right way.

Many things can be done the wrong way if not embraced properly and your brand or product can be easily damaged.

For instance, try to avoid selling your product to your audiences. Selling, bragging, pushing the product into the consumer’s mind can have a negative effect to it. What consumers are really interested in is the what’s in it for me. What your brand or product can do/offer or how it can help them.

There’s a second part to the first statement and it is self-promotion. It’s a great thing that you believe in yourself, in your brand and what you’re selling, however, there’s a lot of useful information out there that you might be overlooking. Information that can be valuable to both you and your consumers. Don’t be afraid to learn from your competitors.

You’re not listening, therefore, you’re not engaging in conversation. You must always listen in order to know what’s going on, find out about what people are talking about and especially, what they’re saying about your brand. Do not ignore criticism, respond to it and try to tackle it the best way possible as to be able to turn the situation around to achieve positive results.

Don’t bombard your audience with millions of facts, figures and articles just to show them that you’re savvy. Do share information that you find offers interesting insights, even if it’s just one piece of information. However, make sure you share it, discuss it, comment on it, involve your readers and ask for opinions.

Have you spotted the right channels to place your brand? If you’re not sure, it’s important that you identify who and where your audience is. Make sure you’re listening and addressing your messages to the right people, if not, it’ll be quite hard to get anyone’s attention.

Do not use only one social network. If you want your brand to have the most visibility and exposure, why narrow it down to just one…especially when many social networks today cover all possible niches, therefore, there’s a much greater chance your content, brand or product will go viral.

These are only some of the actions you should avoid doing as part of your social media strategy. It’s important because, with technology being ubiquitous and accessible to all, we’ve been given the tools to carry on conversations, engage with prospects and customers, share and place our brand/product in the eyes of many, hence, it’s imperative that we embrace these tactics and exploit the opportunities available to us.

For more dont’s, check out this article.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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