How to prevent Social Media Marketing Failure [SEO#14] – Social networking is one of the best ways to build an online business. After all, it is effective and mostly free—what is there not to love here? However, there are a few mistakes that can destroy your social media marketing. These are so common that it is a little sad. Okay, it is a LOT sad. And by avoiding these mistakes, you can give your online campaigns an automatic advantage. Here are a few things NOT to do.

How to prevent Social Media Marketing Failure Video

Social networking is somewhat controversial in the ecommerce world. On one hand, it is a great way to bring in customers and promote your ecommerce website. On the other hand, it can be a huge time sink, one that does not really pay off for many businesses. This is a personal matter that depends on your audience and your general market, so you ultimately have to decide if social networking is worth your time. Here are a few things to look at when evaluating the situation.

• Number of fans. This is an obvious factor, but one that many ecommerce website owners ignore. If someone is not motivated to click ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’, they probably will not be motivated to become a customer. Fans are by definition engaged with your brand via social networking, so a dearth of them indicates that this media is simply not reaching them. If you are spending a half-hour every day managing a social network with fifty fans, you may need to think hard about time priorities.
• Amount of interaction. Not only is it important to evaluate your number of fans, you should also keep tabs on how much these fans interact with your pages. A fan that clicks ‘Like’ and never returns is not the same as one who is actively viewing and sharing content. A small but highly engaged customer base is more valuable than a large and indifferent one. Therefore, the level of interaction and brand engagement should be a big part of how you evaluate your ecommerce website.
• Traffic. Even if you have few fans or relatively inactive ones, your social media campaign may be reaching a large amount of people if it has a lot of views or traffic. Quality beats quantity, but this does not mean that quantity is useless altogether. If your social networking pages are being viewed but your fan base remains low, this can mean that your social media strategy needs to be rethought. Obviously fans are interested in your page, but something is stopping them from taking the next step.
• Leads and Profit. Sometimes a social networking website seems dead, but when evaluated it is found that it is driving a large number of leads and sales to the website. This is definitely something to consider. After all, sales are ultimately the point of your marketing efforts; a social networking campaign that produces them is a success even if other aspects (such as number of fans) seem lacking. You might be surprised; Dell, for example, found that they make $1 million per year on leads from Twitter alone.
• SEO. Social media websites that link to your ecommerce website can help to increase your search engine optimization. This is not the main purpose of social networking, but it is certainly a nice side benefit. Even if you don’t feel that your social media campaign is bringing in fans, it may be worth it to maintain a minimal amount of social networking just to bump your site up in search engine results.

Small business professionals are always hearing about how Facebook and Twitter can change their life. While we certainly use these networks and have written a lot about them, there is another network that is growing in strength: LinkedIn.

With only about 80 million users, LinkedIn is the shy stepchild of the social media family. However, it has a very different consumer base than the other flashier networks. More than eighty percent of LinkedIn users have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, and more than sixty percent are decision makers in their companies. Here are few tips for reaching the people that comprise this more professional, more affluent network.

1. Be a team player.

As with most social networks, people are not going to look for you. That means you need to look for them. The best way to do this is to join groups that are relevant to your interests and your line of business. LinkedIn allows you to join up to fifty groups—that’s a lot of contacts, especially if you choose the largest and most active ones!

2. Choose friends wisely.

A common mistake that many small businesses owners make on LinkedIn is joining groups or making friends with people who are similar to them—too similar. Honestly, it won’t do any good to be friends with your competition. Instead, identify and seek out people who are potential suppliers, potential customers, or otherwise can contribute something concrete to your business.

3. Stay active.

Many people join groups but never actually participate. No one is going to buy from you simply because they see your name occasionally on the group roster. Regularly post content and status messages. Be an active member with opinions and information to share. Don’t just throw out random details about your life; be a consistent source of factual information.

4. Be your professional brand.

Posting is important, but make sure you are posting in a way that will maintain your professional brand and image. Provide informative content in a tone that is consistent with the brand that you are trying to build. Answer questions on the Q & A boards and within the groups that you belong to. The goal is to establish yourself as an industry expert and to get your business name out there.

5. Build followers.

If you are regularly posting informative content, you probably will begin to build a community. However, there is another way to gather fans: by creating a community. Start your own group, dedicated to a subject that is related to your customers’ interests and your business. This will allow you to get your message heard and to have a little control over the conversation. Many LinkedIn users routinely check in with their groups, so this is a great way to build you brand and get a little additional exposure.

LinkedIn may be small, but their members are among the most powerful in the business world. Don’t ignore this underrated network like so many of your competitors likely do. Instead, use it as an integral part of your social media marketing plan.

Should you be able to own the Twitter hashtag with your company’s name? This is a question that keeps coming up in the branding world. We are used to seeing the Promoted Products tags at the top of our Twitter searches, but these are increasingly being used to edge in on the competition. For example, HP recently began purchasing space on the #apple, #mac, and #dell hashtags. This is raising concerns about copyrights and their applications on social networking sites.

We are already used to companies purchasing certain phrases. For example, the Washington Post purchased #elections and Target purchases #BlackFriday. However, neither of these are proprietary phrases the way #apple and #dell are. The main question is: should Twitter permanently sell certain hashtags and phrases so that companies can protect their brand? More important, should they offer companies that own these trademarks the opportunity to purchase them before they are put up on the general market? Should a company even have to purchase the right to their own copyrighted name and phrases?

Apple and Mac are both trademarked by Apple, so purchasing spots using these phrases is rather a low blow. Users should be able to go to the Apple store when they type in these phrases; instead, they are taken to the HP one. This creates a confusing situation, one that legal trademarks and copyrights were created to prevent. The only remedy would be to permanently give ownership of the hashtags to the companies who already own the phrase. However, this would cut into Twitter’s income stream substantially while infringing on other companies’ rights to reach out to potential customers.

Another issue is that many trademarks are rather generic. There are many different kinds of apple—not just the technology company, but the type that you eat, Fiona Apple, and even the Big Apple. The same goes for Mac. Who would be offered first dibs on a term like that? Unfortunately, many trademarks present the same challenge. On the other hand, advertising on a competitor’s territory—even if nominally legal—is unlikely to win customers. If you are looking for an Apple and HP pops up, it will only be an annoyance.

Why do twitter tags matter? Because they are becoming a huge part of the American retail landscape. Americans talk about their purchases, and more and more they are doing this via their favorite social networking platforms. This year out of 281,000 Black Friday tweets analyzed by researchers, around 156,000 were about Walmart. If one store can garner this much online interest, you can imagine how many tweets about retail in general were sent that day. Twitter and other social networking websites present the greatest branding and copyrighting challenge of our day, and offer the greatest rewards as well.

Twitter is still relatively new to the marketing game, so they will likely have to rethink and modify their plan several times before they come up with a solution that is both lucrative and fair to everyone involved. Until then, you can expect hashtags to get weirder and weirder as every company with the income battles for the most used terms.

Social networking is an incredibly potent tool when it comes to marketing your business and your brand. It gets your logo design and core values out into the public eye in a way that is fun, friendly, and, best of all, free. However, many small business owners find that their social networking sites end up being more of a detriment than a benefit, because they allow the public to see sides of you that may not be congruent with your business’s professional image. Here are five simple tools for using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites in a way that benefits your company and build your brand.

Monitor personal revelations. There is nothing wrong with having personal information on your social networking sites; in fact, it may build your brand as customers will increasingly see you and your business as human and likeable. However, be very careful about what kind of personal information you post. Pictures of your children in Halloween costumes may be appropriate, depending on your brand, but picture of your drunken misbehavior at a Halloween party likely will diminish your business brand and your professional image.

Watch your language. Even a well placed and seemingly appropriate swear word will offend many of your customers, and the nature of the internet guarantees that this one slip will be ‘out there’ in the public view for decades to come. Using offensive language doesn’t say a lot about your vocabulary skills, either. Similarly, being critical or snarky may not be complimentary to your professional brand. Censor yourself carefully to create a positive image that customers will see as both professional and likeable.

Be politically correct. Unless political or other activism is part of your business brand, don’t include it at your professional site. Most businesses will not benefit from being controversial or overly opinionated. It will only alienate that larger-than-you-think portion of your customers who don’t agree with your personal beliefs.

Consistently update. Customers will stop returning to your page if you don’t routinely update it and add new information. This is a chance to present your brand to the world, so make sure you have a constant flow of relevant information that increase your market’s engagement with your brand while encouraging traffic to your business.

Maintain good branding principles. This basically sums up the preceding four rules. Small business branding isn’t just about logo design and color palettes, although these are certainly important. Every communication and addition to your social media pages needs to be a brand-builder, not a brand-buster. In the end, you didn’t create a social networking presence so your customers could see your weekend party picture; you did so to market your small business brand.

If you have questions about how to brand your company using social networking, or if you don’t really have a brand at all, talking to a branding consultant can get you started on the right path. Don’t let this opportunity to present your brand and your logo design to the public slip past you, and certainly don’t let it become a detriment.