Are you using social media marketing in your business? If so, you're not alone. According to Aberdeen Research, 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form. If that stat doesn't impress you, how about this: social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web!
There's a high likelihood that you're using social media to market your business, but are you doing it well? Are your efforts producing leads and customers? Are they helping promote your business as an authority within your industry? Here are 7 deadly sins that will doom your social media marketing efforts to a dismal failure if you don't heed them.
1. Thou shalt listen as well as speak
Some marketers view social media as a megaphone to blast out promotional messages. Good luck with that - who wants to opt-in to be yelled at? Don't be that guy or gal.
You have a target prospect list, right? Follow/like every company on your list. Listen to what they have to say and learn what's important to them. Use LinkedIn to get to know more about the people you want to know at your target customers. Don't do this to stalk them; do it so that you can communicate with them on their terms and respectfully.
Listen for the opportunity to help someone. For example, if someone poses a question in a LinkedIn group, answer it in a helpful way. Know that others will see you being helpful and offering good advice in your area of expertise.
Keep in mind that social media influences people's perception of you, and it can go either way.
2. Thou shalt not use social media without a strategy
Before you start posting away on social media, you need to develop a strategy that recognizes the behaviors of your target audience. That statement presumes that you've completed the first element of a social media marketing strategy - you've defined your audience.
An effective strategy starts with defining your target audience. Answer these questions to define your target audience:
- What are the characteristics of your ideal customer? What industries produce your most profitable customers? Where are they located? What size are they? Are there internal characteristics of a company that indicate that they will be a good customer for you? (For example, a bookkeeping firm may value businesses without a full-time accountant.)
- Who are your ideal buyers at your ideal customer? What are their titles? What role do they play in the buying process? What are their demographic characteristics? What are their pain points and what are their aspirations?
Knowing your audience is the keystone to your social media marketing strategy. Knowing your audience will help you focus your efforts on the right social networks and know what content to share with them. Everything you do should either educate them, alleviate their pain points and help them achieve their aspirations.
3. Thou shalt not conduct thyself like a used car salesman on social media
There's nothing worse than being bombarded by a never-ending stream of self-promoting, high-pressure sales tactics on social media. Here's a tip - if someone is telling the social media world how great your company is, it shouldn't be you! The only way you should be sharing your awesomeness with the world is by way of a customer testimonial.
Don't be the skunk at the garden party. After all, how does your bragging about yourself educate, alleviate customer pain points or help them achieve their aspirations? Short answer? It doesn't. So don't do it! You will turn off more people than you will attract to your company.
4. Thou shalt share other's content on your social networks
This is a corollary of deadly sin #3. Hopefully you are producing your own marketing content that is helpful to your customers and prospects. You have every right to promote that content on your social networks (assuming it is helpful.) But you should share other's helpful content as well.
If you see an article you like from a business publication or trade journal, share it with your audience. If you see industry news or helpful tips and tricks that will help your target audience do their jobs better, share it.
If you're looking for a formula to determine how much of your content and how much of other people's content to share, we recommend the 10:4:1 rule as a starting point. If you're producing a lot of content, try the 50:50 rule.
5. Thou shalt not fail to include lead conversion opportunities in your social media marketing
The most common mistake I see in social media marketing is the failure to include lead conversion opportunities in the content being shared. If you're going to invest the time and resources into business blogging, you should include lead conversion opportunities in your blog to help recoup your investment. Heres' an illustration of the inbound lead generation process courtesy of HubSpot.
The inbound lead generation process exchanges your premium content offer like an eBook, video or webinar for contact and other information - an email address at minimum. By opting-in to your marketing process, your lead starts a digital relationship with your company. This is how you fill the top of your inbound funnel.
By judiciously posting landing pages and conversion-optimized blog posts, you can generate leads with your social media marketing - just don't overdo it and turn people off.
6. Thou shalt not spam your followers
Be respectful of other people in social media. Learn the best times to post on social media and plan your posts out in advance. No one wants to see a week's worth of your posts consecutively in their timelines. Take the time to plot out a social media editorial calendar to strategically determine what you're going to say, what you're going to promote and when and where you're going to do it.
Get educated - take HubSpot's free inbound marketing certification to learn the fundamentals of social media and inbound marketing. This will give you the technical foundation to effetctively manage your social/inbound marketing process. It will also help you tell who's an inbound marketing expert and who isn't when dealing with vendors.
Being respectful to your social media audience will help produce the results you're aiming for.
7. Thou shalt not fail to measure and optimize your social media marketing
With the right software in place, you can measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing and its contribution to the bottom line. Measure things like:
- The growth of your social media reach (followers across social networks.)
- Engagement with your content (think which post/network sent the most traffic to your website.)
- Lead and customer conversion resulting from your social media marketing.
By looking at these and other metrics, you will learn:
- Which social networks are most effective for your business.
- Which/what type of content offers get the most engagement from your audience
By putting the right content on the right networks at the right time, you'll maximize the return on your social media marketing.
Summary
So there you have it. Avoid these 7 deadly social media marketing sins and you will be rewarded. You will generate business and your reputation as an expert in your industry will spread throughout your audience. More importantly, your prospects and customers will love you.
