The biggest mistake businesses make using social media is that they all too easily forget about the ‘social’ part.
Social media is not and should not be used as a pure promotional channel.
The problem is, most businesses treat it the same as they would TV, radio, magazines or newspapers. You can’t treat social media (or any digital channel, for that matter) that way – the audience just isn’t as captive and it’s easy for them to look away if they don’t like what you have to say.
If you spend enough time reading about digital trends and social media, it’s easy to start thinking that everyone knows about this stuff. The truth is that most businesses still have a very old-school marketing mentality and approach any new platform as just another opportunity to spruik their message.
The real value of social media only comes when you are being social.
The strategy most businesses seem to employ is to harvest as many followers as possible and then spam the hell out of them. Not good.
Instead of shouting your message, find a way to be useful to your community of friends and followers. Add real value to your interactions by sharing cool links to stuff they might find interesting as well as to your own great content whether it be funny or actually useful. Simply put, do something beneficial to your community instead of self-serving.
While some self-promotion is tolerated and can even be helpful when it is targeted and timely, too much and you may find that your audience will start to switch off.
