I bet you are one of those people thinking about implementing a social media marketing strategy for your company right? ‘Well here are some sure fire ways to end any and all efforts you are thinking about pursuing.
Stop any and all effort right now
Listen to the skeptics who are touting social media as a useless medium to gain publicity in addition to poor methods of increasing search engine visibility. Don’t bother with looking for any positive feedback to show your boss as to why utilizing these outlets are of any benefit to the organization.
“But our clients use Twitter/Facebook”
- So? Just because in October 2009, Twitter announced their user growth grew 200% between the years 2008-2009, is no reason to go running creating accounts in attempt to connect with existing customers whilst reaching new ones. And just ignore the fact that Facebook announced earlier in 2009 that their number of users world wide had reached 200 million. This data is only showing an increased number of viewers online, and since print advertising is doing so well it isn’t worth the effort of getting involved in any social outlets.
“You don’t want to hire someone to spend hours a day on the Internet”
- It may be effortless to set up an account on every social medium, but time is money and regardless of the fact that one sale from these efforts could pay for a year of social efforts, its not worth it. Even if you decide to set up multiple accounts how do you plan to manage them all? Use something like “Tweet Deck” that allows users to control multiple accounts from the desktop and smart phone? I don’t think so, bookmarking such sites for ease of availability is trivial.
“You tried it once, it didn’t really work out, so do don’t try again”
- Don’t learn from your past experience if it failed once, it will again. It doesn’t matter if every week more methods and online tools are becoming available to aid social media efforts. “Tweek Deck” and bookmarking will clutter your desktop and browser. If you are going to go about pursuing online efforts look for short cuts. If you see an ad, “Pay us $49.99 and we’ll get you 10,000 Twitter Followers” act on it! Ignore the equation, “The amount of effort exerted + time of effort = amount of success” this is pure poppycock.
Using Social Media Marketing
Alright, you’ve gone and done it and set up either a Twitter or Facebook account. But no one is following you on Twitter and the Facebook Fan page doesn’t have any activity on it. Well you tried, that’s it give up. Whatever you do don’t take some time to re-focus and think.
“You tweet and update Facebook as your company announces a new product or event.”
- Good you’ve done everything you are supposed to do with one of those accounts.
- Don’t re-tweet or create links to current articles pertaining to your industry.
- Don’t post any case studies you’ve successfully done.
- Don’t invite guest authors to write a special post.
“No one re-tweets us or interacts on your Fan Page”
- Don’t sweat it. Even though social is defined as, “Friendly companionship or relations. Seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.” You shouldn’t have to reach out to others. After all, you are the reason people join social media outlets right? If all you are doing is updating, re-tweeting you are doing fine.
- Don’t follow others on Twitter.
- Don’t track down current customers, industry partners and trend setters
- Follow potential customers as much as possible, flood their pages and email with your company information as much as you can.
- Don’t encourage your customers to participate, stifle those voices right away so yours can be heard.
- Don’t post comments on other blogs, fan pages or re-tweet appropriate tweets. You are the reason people get online, after all since you are a big business in real life everyone will know who you are online as well.
“You update as often as time allows”
- Eh, don’t worry about sticking to a schedule. Once a month or every other quarter is fine enough.
- Don’t research your customer base to find out what time of the day their time is spent online and plan updates accordingly.
- Don’t worry about involving multiple members of the marketing team, one person is enough.
- Don’t worry about showing the diversity of your company, even if you have several departments one account is sufficient for all of them.
- More than one person does not need to know how to access the accounts and create relevant interesting updates. If that person is gone on vacation, so does the social updates. Too bad so sad.
“How will you know if what you are posting is good content?”
- Don’t listen to your audience or update according to their needs.
- Don’t poll/survey your customer base.
- As you journey along the path to having successful social media campaigns you may receive insight from customers and others who participate, do not listen to a word they say. Any interaction an individual can get from a company is a good opportunity to lose sight of things and get distracted.
Finally if you want to ruin any and all efforts in social media marketing be like the old dog and don’t learn any new tricks. When you develop a method stick with it regardless of any new methods or mediums that come out. You may hear Bruce Lee’s quote in reference to learning social media, “Be like water”, don’t. If you truly want to fail at social media marketing simply don’t do anything.
Joshua Titsworth is a Ouachita Baptist University graduate currently working as a Digital Marketing Specialist at Chemidex in Overland Park, KS. Josh got his start in digital marketing working for a non-profit in Kansas City as the Director of Development and Project Manager. Since finding his niche he left the non profit realm to purse a career in digital marketing. In addition to this job at Chemidex Josh volunteers at various non-profits in the area to aid and educate in their online endeavors.
