Are you losing it with social media? Here’s how to find your way again

Social media is a medium that can be used to dramatically enhance your digital marketing campaigns. Often you will see businesses half-heartedly starting a social media campaign and quickly drop all their efforts because the outcome is not what they expected it to be. While social media can be a lot easier and less expensive than other forms of digital marketing, it will only work when you put in some old traditional effort. You have to do more than just be on the social web with your shiny social media profiles.

Social media is a fun medium and very user-friendly. But if the goal with your social media campaign is to increase leads, sales or awareness, if you are not getting any results, it’s most likely you are committing one of the big no no’s with this medium. If this is you, don’t worry; find a couple of tips below that can help you put your campaign on the right track.

Social media ghost towns

I’m sure you must have seen one before on the social web: profiles that are empty, unmanned and look like a ghost town. Only publishing a couple of irrelevant updates a week on your social media profiles doesn’t mean you are active. In reality it means that you are not really into it. Guess what? Your audience can tell. Everyone knows that brands are creating profiles on the social web for their marketing campaigns, but simply having a ghost presence is not enough. An empty profile with no activity clearly shows that you are not doing it with a clear purpose, and that will be a huge turnoff for many.

Keeping your profiles active on the social web and engaging with like-minded people is easy with the right social media management applications. Have a look at how you can use Hootsuite to keep track of the people you are following and how you can engage with them directly. You can also use this tool to regularly create and curate content to post to all the popular social media channels.

If you are really interested in meeting your business goals with social media, move beyond the simple basics. Use real-time search tools such as Twitter search to find people you can talk to directly. Even better, look for people who are looking for answers or solutions related to your business and how you can help them. Talk to them, start a conversation, and offer them help. Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or another social media channel, your social prospecting will indeed pay off in the end, if you follow the rules.

Don’t start with a hardcore approach

It’s really easy to spot a brand that doesn’t understand the mechanics of social media. They start their campaign with spamming people with aggressive marketing and sales messages. Your target audience doesn’t spend their time on social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter to read sales messages the whole time. They are on those channels to connect with like-minded individuals and to be social.

As a rule of thumb, post one promotional post for every nine other posts you make that aren’t related to any sales or marketing pitches. Your social media marketing campaign should provide unique and informational posts to your network. People should interact and engage with you on the social web because they choose to do so, not because they have to.

Brainstorm new ways how you can draw people towards you with your social media profiles. Focusing on creating magnetic content is a great way because it’s magnetic — pulls people in.

Don’t freak out

Social media is social, public, and not a channel where you should be overly sensitive. With traditional offline networking meetings, you’d never lose your professional behavior, and the same counts for the online world. While you can monitor and listen to any mentions about you on the social web, don’t freak out when you encounter any negative remarks about your services, products or brand from time to time. Never take it personally. Instead, look at the negative remark or comment from the inside out and think about how you can learn from it. Was it a mistake you made that you can correct? Can you better your services and products by learning through this that it doesn’t work the way you intended it to work? See this as an opportunity to show your audience that you really care and value what they think.

Make a point of being helpful with any negative comments and mentions you receive. Doing it this way will result in a constructive conversation that can lead the upset person who posted the comment feeling better, and social media is public, so others can also see that you have taken the time to address the matter. Whatever you do on the social web, never respond harshly and aggressively, and never ever ignore it. It won’t just disappear. Use it to show the world that you care about your brand.

If you have been guilty of doing any of the nasty things explained above in your campaign, don’t worry. Start by addressing the issues and turn your campaign around.