10 Mistakes Social Marketers Should Avoid

Social media is rapidly evolving and best practices can be elusive. Marketers who are eager to get started and quickly adapt may be missing an opportunity or preventing their own success. Before you attempt to build a working strategy, you should take care to avoid these classic snags.

Guest Author - Eric Taylor works as a freelance writer and business developer for Qwaya, a Facebook ad manager tool. Qwaya provides extensive information, tools and up-to-date news about social media marketing trends and strategies, most specifically on facebook. The company's goal is to build and develop a sophisticated tool for social media marketers that is powerful, user-friendly and affordable.

1: No Defined Goal

If you truly wish to succeed in social marketing, you have to define goals. Do you want more conversions, thousands of new leads, more brand awareness, and other reachable goals? If so, define goals beforehand so you can devise a system to achieve them.

2: Inconsistency in Approach

Your brand has to come across as steady and reliable. You can’t update your marketing tactics twice a week for a few months and then stop, or suddenly start posting many more updates then usual. You should not change your brand’s mission too abruptly either. Show some consistency.

3: Pushing Too Hard

When you want to target customers, Facebook is the perfect platform, but there’s a difference in targeting your market and communicating with contacts, and outright spamming people. Don’t push too hard. Let the engagement happen naturally.

4: Being Too Vague

Some marketers have an aloof way of communicating, wherein the market never really knows what the brand is about. Don’t become vague in your marketing. You are in business to provide value, services, or products. You don’t have to lead with this, but don’t lose sight of it or hide it.

5: Monotone Networking

You should have more than a Facebook page and a main website. You should set up an entire network, including Twitter, LinkedIn, and other popular sites like YouTube and Instagram. Link your network together and build up an integrated presence. Don’t rely only on one site.

6: Sleeping on Opportunities

There’s a lot of competition in social marketing, and the idea you have today may be taken tomorrow. If you have an idea for a Twitter handle, a Facebook app, etc, pilot it quickly.

7: Blending Business with Personal

Although your brand should have a lot of personality, you shouldn’t blend your personal profile with your brand’s business/fan page. Keep things separated as much as possible.

8: Lack of Engaging Content

Content that performs well in social media does so because it’s able to be liked and shared and spread throughout other people’s networks. Make sure your content is engaging. Boring content alienates your audience.

9: No Picture Use

On a site like Facebook, images are king when it comes to content. A failure to properly utilize images could limit your social campaign’s engagement. A great image is a post all its own.

10: Lack of Information

Although text-based posts and other text-based page elements should be succinct, you still have to include ample information. Don’t leave out pertinent details that your base should know about.

Of the many mistakes you could potentially make in your social campaign, the ten above only cover the very tip of the iceberg. However, it’s important that you start from somewhere in order to get a feel for the things you should be avoiding.