Some of you will not have dabbled yet, I'm sure. The shiny toys won't have tempted you. But, the lure of the shiny new world of marketing has captured many of you and I am pretty sure that many of you related to that story of Rebecca at the start of this book.
Facebook and Twitter have to win the prizes for being the two biggest knee-jerk social media sites out there. Because many of you probably started to use Facebook for true social sharing and signed up because your "real-life" friends and family were on there, it's easy to start dabbling with a Facebook Page and try using it to promote your business.
Twitter, on the other hand, makes it so simple to set up a new account that it's hard to believe that all you need is a name, email address and password and Bam! ... you can tweet to the world.
However, when you do set up your Facebook Page or Twitter account, it's easy to wonder what all the fuss is all about. It doesn't become the holy marketing grail that you had hoped it would be. It hasn't made a slightest bit of difference to your bottom line.
If you worked your way through the previous five steps outlined in this book, you will have probably worked out what you are doing wrong already and be deciding what actions to take to start getting it to work. But, if you've come straight to the back of this book and decided you wanted to skip through all the hard work of getting your website, blog and email marketing working first, here are the problems you will - and may be already - encountering.
Reasons why your social media marketing won't work
No target audience. This is THE biggest mistake that small business owners make with all marketing activities. As I've explained throughout this book, it's not just a social media mistake. If you don't take the time to identify exactly who you want to reach out to, then you may as well stand on your local street corner and hand out leaflets to every passerby. One day, someone may be interested ... but that's an awful lot of leaflets.
No objectives. Again, not just a social media mistake, if you don't know what you want to achieve, how will you know whether you have been successful or what actions need taking each and every week. If you haven't taken the time to decide what results you want, don't bother setting up a social networking profile in the first place. It will be a waste of your time.
Lack of content planning. There's nothing worse than starting the week and avoiding your new shiny Facebook Page because you haven't got a clue what to post on your wall. It is a drain on you, both financially and emotionally.
No personalisation. How personal you get does depend on your business brand. But hiding behind your corporate logo is just not going to work on social media for a business like yours. You don't necessarily have to use a photo of you on your social networks (although I do recommend that you do) but you do have to be "you" when using social media.
Sharing really private stuff is not necessary either, but there will be some public private stuff that will make you human. See later in the book for more on this topic.
Chasing numbers and pleading for more fans. Numbers do make you feel good. It's great to be loved by hundreds of people, isn't it? But numbers don't always guarantee success. It's the engagement you get with those fans that will build trust with your brand and ultimately help turn them in to paying clients. And nothing looks more desperate than regular tweets and posts asking and asking and asking. Create great content and you naturally attract the right people to you.
It's all about you. Even though you have to be "you" on your social networks, that doesn't mean you become a business bore. Sharing stuff about your business and making special offers all the time is boring at best, spammy at worst. You've got to ask yourself "What's in it for my network?" Share stuff that interests your fans - trade secrets, useful resources, funny videos, latest industry developments and sneak peeks of new products. Much more on this later.
Automated feeds. Automating one or two things to be posted on to your social updates is OK, but be careful of making all your status updates automated. Again, this topic is covered in more detail later in this chapter.
No marketing systems behind your social media activity. And the last, but quite possibly the most frequent mistake made, is if you don't have the right marketing systems working for you - taking interested people from your social networks in to your website(s), on to your mailing lists and building relationships with them in your own home - then you run the risk of being a popular, but very poor person.
Make the take the time to go through each of the five steps outlined in this book. If you ensure you know who it is you want to engage with, have a website, blog and email marketing systems set up with the right free offer(s) available, this will rocket fuel your social media success.
If you would like to find what happens next, then pre-order your copy right now.
"Karen Skidmore works with small business owners to show them how to build the business model, create the marketing systems and use the right web tech marketing tools to attract more of the right clients to their business. To subscribe to her free email newsletter and get access to practical advice that will move your business forward, visit www.CanDoCanBe.com"