1. Doing It Wrong:
5 Ways to FAIL at Social Media
@HalLublin
Co-Founder, SMMI
Director of Social Media,
Swagbucks.com
Are you actually reading this?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
striatic
25. Summary:
1. Take the time to create a game plan, but don’t let it stop
you from taking action.
2. Give yourself a chance to succeed by measuring what
matters.
3. Create an action plan that you can execute consistently.
4. Use the Hub & Spokes - don’t put all of your eggs in one
basket.
5. Listen to your customers, set boundaries/behavior
expectations, and take conflicts offline.
27. Doing It Wrong:
5 Ways to FAIL at Social Media
@HalLublin
Co-Founder, SMMI
Director of Social Media,
Swagbucks.com
Are you actually reading this?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
striatic
Notas del editor
\n
Background: Used to work as consultant, wrote the course for technology in real estate, SM director for Swagbucks.com - 4,000,000 users over numerous platforms\n
Who is currently active on a social media site for their business? \n
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Planning Fail occurs in one of two ways:\n\n1. You’re in such a hurry to rushget your profile up and going that you just charge in with no real plan in place to sustain/exectue\n\n2. You spend so much time analyzing over and over again that you never take action.\n
Planning Fail occurs in one of two ways:\n\n1. You’re in such a hurry to rushget your profile up and going that you just charge in with no real plan in place to sustain/exectue\n\n2. You spend so much time analyzing over and over again that you never take action.\n
We need to talk about the value of planning and strategy, because we’re going to come back to it over and over again.\n\nIt’s really important to understand how your customers relate to you and what needs of theirs you’re serving with your social presence. Are you listening to them? What are they asking for? What are their expectations? DO they want it to be a venue for customer service? Do they expect special deals? Are they getting something from your Facebook page that they can’t get from your website? It’s about delivering value to your customer in a way that also delivers value to you, and that can go far beyond coupon codes or sales.\n\nAll of that information is vital to the planning process and the formulation of a coherent, actionable strategy.\n
The real key to this particular fail, though, is a balanced approach\n\nWhile you shouldn’t blindly rush into a social media presence, overplanning can stifle you to the point of never getting anything done. Have intentions and goals and direction, but realize that ultimately you’re creating something organic, that can and will change over time.\n
FAIL #2 is all about ROI and measuring how you’re doing. Too often people either have no goals because they fall back on “Social Media not having an ROI”, or they set unrealistic goals that aren’t tied to their activities.\n
Your measurement of success has to come from two things: your intentions and your goals. You can’t just apply traditional metrics as a barometer of your success if you aren’t using your social tools in a way that supports or directly relates to those metrics. Once you have your goals, then you have a direction as far as figuring out what to measure, and what numbers/results will matter to you.\n\nAlso, I’m going to encourage you to think beyond just numbers. Numbers are great, and can be impressive, but it’s more about the level of engagement and influence you wield that’s important. A large group of people can add nothing to your business, while sometimes a small group of dedicated consumers can make a big difference. Numbers as a goal is OK, but to really take it to the next level, those increased numbers should carry the expectation of increased clicks, responses, shares, etc.\n\nThat’s when you get into the good stuff and are able to see more clearly how your use of social is moving the needle.\n\nTalk about correlations, too - are support/service complaints going down? \n
The more social networks you commit your business to, the more of your time, resources and money are being stretched. Autoposting to a number of networks with the exact same information will dilute your effectiveness, and you’ll set yourself up to burn out and not get what you need out of your efforts.\n
Part of the key to successfully sustaining your social efforts is consistency in posting and engagement. It’s incredibly difficult to scale social media successfully, and it’s often not even necessary, since you may not be doing anything different on your different social networks - youtube has the same info as Facebook, which is just condensed onto Twitter.\n
To avoid overextending yourself, take a good hard look at your business plan, and figure out which platforms are going to serve your strategy. Where are your customers doing the most talking? How will your social accounts work together to help you drive brand value forward? Keep your focus on the big picture, but do the little things to execute. That way, when new platforms offer the opportunity to enhance/extend your efforts, you’re in the best possible position to recognize and capitalize on them.\n
The 4th great way to fail is to put all of your eggs in one basket. Social networks are tools, NOT destinations.\n
Facebook is great place to engage with consumers, and with the use of apps and landing pages, it was even a place to capture and possibly convert. However, Facebook doesn’t exist to serve your business - they’re looking to drive the evolution of how we connect as people, and that can be inconvenient for businesses who have settled into a groove on FB. What change will they make next? Nobody knows.\n
Also, you could invest time and resources in the new, hot site/service that promptly disappears one day. Again, you don’t control it and you can’t do anything about it.\n
They key to this is the Hub and spokes strategy - explain hub and spokes\n
Our final FAIL is big one: taking all criticism of your business/product personally. \n
Sometimes your customers seem like an angry mob to you - full of negative feedback, mocking you, taking any opportunity to knock you down a peg. A lot of times the natural reaction is to go on the defense, or shut down comments and censor every negative post about your company or product.\n\nAn example of that is the VW article from Huffington Post that I shared on twitter this morning - they’re under fire from Greenpeace and their own community about their stance on some environmental regulations, and they’re responding on their Facebook page by deleting all negative and crital comments. Regardless of your political leanings, the one thing that is universal in this story is that VW’s being criticized for how they’re handling the backlash\n
- Take the time to listen to your customers - find the value in their feedback, and use the opportunity to let them know they’re heard\n- Set boundaries for behavior - what is and isn’t acceptable - and make it clear that feedback is valued, and if it isn’t on that site, give them a place to go.\n- Take conflicts offline and resolve them there. The act of it shows that 1. you’re listening and 2. you’ll do something about it\n
- Take the time to listen to your customers - find the value in their feedback, and use the opportunity to let them know they’re heard\n- Set boundaries for behavior - what is and isn’t acceptable - and make it clear that feedback is valued, and if it isn’t on that site, give them a place to go.\n- Take conflicts offline and resolve them there. The act of it shows that 1. you’re listening and 2. you’ll do something about it\n
- Take the time to listen to your customers - find the value in their feedback, and use the opportunity to let them know they’re heard\n- Set boundaries for behavior - what is and isn’t acceptable - and make it clear that feedback is valued, and if it isn’t on that site, give them a place to go.\n- Take conflicts offline and resolve them there. The act of it shows that 1. you’re listening and 2. you’ll do something about it\n