Five Social Media Mistakes You Make

Social media has exploded. It has even overtaken porn as the No. 1 activity on the Web.
Twitter has found a new home in Smartphones with its 140 character-limit. Google + is catching up on Facebook because it’s tied in tightly with Google accounts, and you even see a Google+ icon inside Gmail now.
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media platforms on earth.
Yes, social media is hot property and, if done right, you can reap huge results with almost little or no investment to start with.
But it also comes with a neon-warning sign if you’re just following the herd and have no idea how to work magic on social media.
The most common attributes of this group are being inexperienced and lazy with social media. Either they don’t know what they are doing, or they simply don’t care too much to do what they should be doing.
Here are five common social media mistakes a lot of businesses make. Could you be making these mistakes too?

1. Measuring the Wrong Things
You’ve got exactly 2,897 followers on Twitter, 6,091 followers on Pinterest and a whopping 10k on Facebook. Great right?
Not necessarily.
For the amateur marketer, it’s a benchmark to reach their first 1,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook. What they forget to consider is the purpose of these likes and how it impacts the business (if at all).
There’s hardly any point behind buying ‘likes’ (yes, people do that) or bribing them into liking your page, never to return again.
Don’t get me wrong — I think giveaways are a great strategy, but what you do after you’ve gained a fan matters the most.
So don’t just measure the number of followers or fans, measure how engaged they are with your brand. Watch metrics like number of shares, tweets or retweets, comments on a post you made, photo views, and even negative feedback such as people “reporting” your page as spam, hiding your stories etc.

2. Being Unclear on Your Goals
Because it’s so easy and free to do so, many businesses open up a social media account and start pushing content in the hopes of gaining exposure and business.
What they forget is the purpose behind their page in the first place. Since there is no clear defined goal for the account, soon they abandon the page because it is not yielding any leads or business.
Beware what you do on the Internet because there’s someone always reading about or watching you. An abandoned social media page that was updated three months ago? Not a great way to build connection with a prospect.
If you’re stuck and unsure what to do with your social media, take a break and come up with the answer to this: Why am I creating this page?
Know exactly what you want from your social media efforts. Is it to connect with new prospects? To answer customer queries and blow them away with your awesome customer service? Build brand awareness?
What’s it going to be for you?
Once you’ve identified a clear “why,” the “how” will follow.

3. Not Going Visual
Smart marketers are shifting focus from social to visual-social and for good reason.
The human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than pure text. In the online world, you have only got as low as three seconds.
Try remembering a 12-digit string of numerals and alphabets. Hard to do, isn’t it? Now grab it as a picture in your mind and try again. You’ll notice that visualizing it as an image makes the process of memorizing quicker.
So the faster they can process your information, the more the chances they will stick to your page longer. Your goal is to create “sticky” pages online.

Visitors will skim through your page before making a decision whether they have come to the right place. If not, they will quickly leave.
Photo posts on Facebook get 39 percent more interaction. Interaction could mean likes, comments or click-throughs. On Twitter, image links get two times the engagement rate as compared to those without one.
YouTube just passed four billion video views. At the time of writing this, Pinterest is the second largest traffic-generating website in the world with 70 million users.
Eighty percent of the pins on Pinterest are “repins” or shared content — so if you create your own original content, you are among the few 20 percent whose content gets shared.
And you don’t have to spend a fortune on creating your own visual content either — tools such as Visme, Canva and PicMonkey let you do it for free.
Share “snackable” visual elements like videos, infographics, visual calls-to-actions that people love sharing. Get creative and add your logo to your images.

4. Too Many Social Media Accounts
There’s a plethora of social media platforms out there – Facebook, Google +, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest, Ning, Tumblr, Twitter and so on.
If you’re on every other social platform, I have one question for you: Why?
Different platforms suit different business. I once had a client who was using rigorous Facebook marketing to drive traffic to their website. They were getting some momentum but nothing mind-blowing.
After a little probing, we found their ideal prospects were in the age group of 55-64, which happens to be the fastest growing demographic on Twitter. We set up a Twitter account for them, created an editorial calendar for Twitter and boom. The progress on Twitter was much faster than on Facebook.
So you see, you don’t have to be there everywhere. Pick one ideal platform and rock at it. You can breathe now.

5. Me, me, me!

If there’s a shortcut to social media FAIL, this is it. Your social media is all about you. It’s your brand, your cool product, your slick new feature.
People are looking for interesting conversations, helpful discussions and meaningful connections that are about them, not you.
It’s a classic formula that probably makes super-hero films successful. A moviegoer imagines himself as the super-hero. That’s when he can relate with the hero in the movie.
Think about someone you know who just likes to talk about himself. Do you enjoy his company? Chances are you don’t and you want to run for the hills every time he invites you over dinner.
Now contrast this with someone who loves to hear about your day, your new pet project, and your life. Sure, you’d love that!
Remember, advertising is not social media. You cannot only keep posting blurbs about your new thing, offer discounts, and push coupons on social media. If that’s what you’ve been doing, it’s time to stop and devise a new strategy. Advertising is not a social media strategy.
Naturally, everyone is looking for some business out of social media marketing. But it’s a big mistake to put sales before building connections. People will eventually buy from you, but before that, you need to make a connection and build trust.
Try doing that by replying to their retweets and mentions on Twitter and comments on Facebook. Keep a tab of which “lists” you’re added on in Twitter. This gives you a great idea of how followers and fans perceive you.