How to fail with your social media campaign

Posted by Anton on Jul 26, 2011 in Social Media

Every minute, a company is advertising a service or product where people have to visit their Facebook Fan page instead of their website. Social media is becoming so popular that when you open up your favourite newspaper or channel, you will most likely see and hear about the broadcaster’s Twitter and Facebook profile.

Social media has been integrated into our news feeds, the movies, and even the music that we buy.  While some social media statistics will try to convince you that the younger crowd are not regular users of Twitter and other Web 2.0 channels, the fact remains that social media has become one of the primary settings for many online marketing campaigns. Web 2.0 channels are providing immediate feedback and reviews and everything is publicly. If you really want to make a good impression on targeted prospects, be ready to respond to “Tweets” and other online mentions with the right information.

If you really want to chase people away, here’s a couple of things you can do to achieve this.

Facebook Groups

Invite people to a Facebook Group without asking their permission.  The creator of a Facebook Group has the ability to add friends to the group automatically.  Facebook Groups are quite handy if you want to create a targeted forum that can take customer concerns off of your Facebook Fan page.  If you add people without their consent, the feedback you will get will most likely be negative.

Only Tweet direct message ads

Just imagine how your customers must feel when they are bombarded with direct messages and mentions with information regarding your services or products.  Don’t ping people directly on a regular basis if they didn’t ask for direct contact.  This is most likely one of the easiest ways to lose readers.

Start a blog and never blog

I still believe that blogs should be one of the central points of your overall social media marketing strategy and campaign.  Blogs capture the attention of search engines.  Blogs are easy to use and broadcast timely messages to the world as they occur. If you are planning to use a blog for your social media strategy, the best thing you can do with that blog will be to blog regularly and never slack off.  If a customer visits your blog and discovers that it was only updated back in 2010, he might get the feeling not to expect any customer service any time soon.  I’m not saying that you should blog every hour, just keep it current.

Being social is the big keyword in social media marketing. You can be social in your activities online without broadcasting your sales pitch every time over the heads of your targeted audience.  Build their trust first before you start selling and provide value first before you start marketing.