8 Social Media Mistakes That Are Killing Your Brand

Social media has great potential for businesses looking
to increase their reach, traffic and leads. But when it’s
not used properly, it can actually damage your brand’s
reputation.
This article will walk you through eight social media
marketing mistakes you should avoid at all costs.
1. Not properly vetting and supervising
your social media managers
Your social media managers are the face of your
company online. With social media now driving almost a
third of all referral traffic, it’s absolutely critical that
those responsible for driving these referrals are up to the
task.
While mistakes can’t always be avoided, we’ve seen too
many examples of inexperienced, untrained or poorly
supervised employees getting free reign of the
company’s social media accounts.
Related: How to Leverage Google+ and Pinterest Search
Take the American Apparel debacle , for example. In
celebration of the Fourth of July, the company posted a
photo of the Challenger space shuttle exploding in
midair. Apparently the social media manager was born
after the 1986 disaster and mistook the explosion for
clouds or fireworks. This could easily have been avoided
had there even been one extra level of redundancy in
place.
2. Not responding appropriately to negative
feedback
Negative feedback is going to happen. You can choose
to ignore it, fight back or take it in stride. How you
respond says a lot about your brand.
Some brands operate under the assumption that they
can simply delete negative comments without
repercussions. Others believe that ignoring negative or
inflammatory comments is the way to go.
Rather than avoiding, why not use these situations as
opportunities to shine? Respond thoughtfully and
promptly to negative comments, and use them as
opportunities to showcase your commitment to customer
service.
3. Buying likes or followers
Buying fans or followers is risky business. Some brands
still believe that padding their numbers by paying for
fictitious fans is a harmless endeavor. But did you know
that buying Facebook fans can actually hurt your brand
by decreasing your overall reach?
Fake fans will never interact or engage with your page,
signaling to Facebook that your content isn’t interesting
or valuable to your audience. This leads to an overall
algorithmic decrease in your post reach and visibility.
You could also find your account being closed, banned
or deleted should Facebook find out about your
schemes.
It’s far better to focus on attracting real, interested fans
who will engage with your posts.
4. Being a one-trick pony
Posting the same types of content again and again can
convey the impression that your brand is boring,
uncreative or just not in tune with your audience. Instead
of posting link after link or quote after quote, change
things up by posting a wide variety of content.
When you get hung up on posting the same types of
content again and again, your followers will become less
engaged and are more apt to think you simply don’t care
about posting engaging content.
5. Promoting your products … constantly
There’s a time and place for promoting your business or
products, even on social media. However, too many
brands are still using social media as a channel for
pushing their marketing message.
Social selling is all about building relationships and trust
that will ultimately lead to sales. Don’t abuse the
platform by using it as billboard or commercial. The
80/20 principle is a good rule of thumb: post engaging,
high-value content 80 percent of the time and promote
your products no more than 20 percent of the time.
Better yet, think about how you can move your social
media fans and followers into your online marketing
funnel -- then you never have to directly promote on
social media.
Related: 10 Ways to Grow a Huge Following on Twitter
6. Being inconsistent in use and messaging
Do you have a schedule for when and how often you
post? Do you have a consistent voice that you use
across all your social media profiles? Do your profile
and cover photos convey what are you brand is about?
How do you respond to negative feedback or criticism?
The best way to be consistent in your social media
marketing is to have a strategy in place. This will
include, among other elements, guidance about how and
when you’ll use social media:
Guidelines for how to respond to negative
comments
A frequently asked questions document that various
team members can refer to. This will help ensure
consistency in messaging.
A repository of brand-related images staff can use
for profile photos, cover photos, etc.
A posting schedule for each social media channel
7. Offering canned responses
Having a social media plan in place will help you to
respond to questions and comments in a consistent
manner. But the "cut and paste" method of responding
to comments -- particularly to criticisms -- can lead to
some pretty significant backlash.
In 2013, Kmart was heavily criticized for using this
strategy to respond to criticisms about their holiday
hours and staffing policies. Using a handful of generic
responses didn’t go over well.
While having prepared responses in place for commonly
asked questions can certainly save you some time, use
them with caution. Keep in mind that criticisms, negative
feedback and specific questions should generally be met
with thoughtful, personalized responses.
8. Spreading yourself too thin
Just because a social networking site exists doesn’t
mean you have to use it. Spreading yourself thin by
committing to too many networks can mean you’re not
using any of them effectively.
Instead of spreading your valuable time and resources
between eight sites, consider choosing the top five, three
or even two sites that are the best match for your target
market. It’s better to fully commit to a regular posting
schedule on a few networks than letting many lie
dormant.
Final thoughts
Avoiding these mistakes all comes down to ensuring
your team is properly trained, using your resources
wisely and responding to your fans and followers in a
professional manner. When it comes down to it, treating
your social media followers the same way you’d treat in-
store customers or clients will help you avoid the worst
of these mistakes.