Using social media marketing in business can extend your capacity to reach potential customers by several fold. If done right, you can convert many of these potential customers into actual customers. If not done right, then you’ve squandered a very valuable opportunity for promoting your brand. Some common mistakes that you can avoid when using social media marketing for your business are:
- Starting with a poorly-prepared social media profile. When others visit your Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages, the first thing they’ll want to know is who you are and what it is that you do. First impressions last so make sure your social media profile is well-written. If what they see is uninspiring, uninteresting, unappealing, boring – why would they want to socialize with you? Take note that in the social media circuit, before you can market and promote, you have to make people to “like” you first, get them to become your “followers” or get them to let you become their “follower.” How effective your social media marketing will depend largely on how far and on how fast your marketing message will be shared and re-shared around the Internet. But first, you must make people want to become “friends” or otherwise associated with you.
- Ignoring or deleting negative comments. Once you decide to go social on the Internet, you’ll be receiving both positive and negative comments. If you ignore, or worse, delete those which you find negative, you’ll likely be doing your business more harm than good. You’ll be perceived and talked about in other web forums as defensive or close-minded and your brand will suffer for it. Besides, these negative comments can inspire you to find other more creative ways to adapt your products and services to what your target customers actually want.
- Relying too much on automated response. Don’t depend too much on your programmed automated message reply system. Once people find out they’re exchanging views with a robot, they’ll just stop engaging with your social media account. Take the time to respond personally as much as you can and people will like you for it. Also, don’t let your robot post the same content and messages across all your different social media channels. People on the social media networks hang around to have a conversation.
- Not properly timing your social media postings. Particularly if you’re using social media for an export marketing business, you have to time when you would make your postings and when you should be personally available to join in the online conversations. For instance, if your target market is in China, you have to go over the demographic data to find out when your potential customers are most likely to be around. If your target market is in the United States, a KISS metrics report says that social media messages posted at about 5 PM have the highest chance of being clicked on and shared.
To assist your export marketing, we offer various web marketing services covering SEO friendly web design, SEO, Google Adwords, Importer Directories for targeted email marketing, etc. For details of our export marketing and SEO services, please visit our website.
Source:
exportmarketing.net Editor
(Specializing in SEO friendly Export Marketing Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, Google Adwords, Email Marketing tools, Export Website Redesign, and other emarketing services)