Social Media is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to business. It’s also led to a lot of disasters that have damaged businesses who made misguided attempts at it.
If you’re in the wedding industry then your client base is already strongly, avidly and passionately involved in social media from pinning their dream ceremonies to watching DIY Youtube videos. The temptation for you is obviously to jump in with both feet. Before you do that, whatever you do, make sure that you’re not sabotaging your business with these very common social media mistakes.
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Try to do too much too fast
Social media is exciting. It’s an opportunity to communicate with Millions of people with the same interests as you. What you’ll find quickly though is that effective social media takes work, time and patience.
All too often I get approached at Junction by business people who spent a few months eagerly tweeting, posting and pinning only to find that they’d abandoned all of their accounts and all o that effort had gone for nothing.
Focus on one thing and get it right. An amazing Facebook Page that has a huge amount of engagement will provide much better benefits to your business than 6 different platforms that each get updates once per week (or worse).
If that sounds like you, don’t worry; you’re in the majority. Instead of worrying about all of the places that you’re not posting, focus on the one that you’re best at and enjoy the most. That’s the one where you have the highest chance of success.
Develop a plan of attack that has your business objectives as the ultimate goal and stick with it. Once you’ve mastered that one platform, then you’ll have a loyal fan base that will follow you to the next network.
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SHOUT ADVERTISING COPY
We’re all tired of being sold. We face billboards, TV ads, radio promotions and magazine spreads every day. Social media is a reprieve where accounts must have real conversations with engaging content rather than blasting us with annoying sales material.
Even so, I see businesses every day who think that they can just sign up for a Facebook Page and blast their sales material to the world in order to help out their business’ marketing efforts. Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
People engage with, share, and ultimately do business with brands that share useful, interesting content and genuinely listen to what they have to say.
By spewing ad copy at the world you’re telling your social media followers that they are nothing more than leads to you. That you don’t respect them enough to develop a relationship and only want to make a sale.
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Spend too much time in the wrong places
Now you’ve decided on one platform and are going to have real dialogue with potential customers. But what if the platform isn’t the best one for you?
Millions of hours are wasted every day by people who are deeply engaged in the wrong social media platforms.
Think about your target customers: Where do they spend their time?
If they’re visual, creative people with an eye for style, then it may be Pinterest.
If your customers are all other business people learning to do things for themselves, then instructional videos may be where you make the most impact.
You’ll know within the first few months whether you’ve made the right choice because your business’ bottom line will change if you’ve made the right choice.
If you have any questions about what to, or what not to do in social media, then please comment below or tweet at us.
