Mistake #1 - Treating Social Media Marketing As a One-Way Street

The power of social media is in its ability to connect people. There needs to be a back and forth conversation between you and your prospects. You shouldn’t be shouting into a void. Rather than pushing out loads of content, focus on creating opportunities for dialogue with your customers that builds trust and establish a relationship. People rarely do business with strangers, they do business with people they know, like, and trust.

Mistake #2 - Jumping Straight Into The Sale

Think of selling as dating. You wouldn’t ask a person you’re interested in to marry you on the first day you meet them. Similarly, customers are not interested in buying your product the first day they encounter it. On social media, focus on creating value first and consistently. Following that, create multiple touchpoints for communication with your customers. Nurture the relationship; use lots of empathy statements to make them feel understood and cared about before you ask them to commit. That goes both for selling and dating.

Mistake #3 - Failing To Tie Social Media Marketing to Your Overall Marketing Goals

Your social media marketing should fit into a broader content marketing and promotion strategy. Each piece of content that you post should have an objective that drives towards a certain goal. These objectives include driving awareness for your brand, product, or service, creating engagement, list building, lead conversion, etc. If your social marketing is not tied to your overall marketing goals then you are not making the best use of it.

Mistake #4 - Treating Social Media Marketing as a Single Discipline

It’s actually composed of 4 equally important parts:

Monitoring and Listening - Monitor, listen and respond to customer inquiries, feedback, and important trends and topics in your industry.

Influencing - establish authority in your industry by posting and sharing relevant and valuable content. You want to use your content to provide *BIG* value to your audience. This value is important because it sets you apart as an expert within your industry.

Networking - Engage and build relationships with valuable brands and influencers in your industry. This creates mutually beneficial relationships and draws more followers to your brand.

Social Selling - Connect a seeking audience with your products and services. This is the part of your social media strategy where you’re running ads to content pieces, lead magnets, and your products. This is where you might be tempted to jump in on day one, but now you know that there are other important pieces of the puzzle that fit into a successful social media strategy.