3 Newbie Social Media Mistakes to Avoid

Social Media is becoming one of the most valuable tools in our marketing arsenal.  It’s a lot easier now to reach our audiences (and target market) in a way that costs a lot less money and builds a lot more trust.

Used well, Social Media tactics can rapidly increase your businesses. However, used badly, it’s going to be a massive a drain on your time.  In some cases, done wrongly, it could even damage your reputation to the extent that it ruins the business.

For us, the main goal for using and interacting in social networks is to elevate the perception of our brand, who we are and what we offer.  It enables us to build strong relationships with our target market.  This sounds really simple but we get many emails from people saying that we’ve helped them increase their business just from reading our blog.

So what mistakes can you avoid, to make your efforts worthwhile and not wasted?

Mistake 1: No Strategy
The biggest killer is to approach all this haphazardly!  You need to look at where you are now with your marketing and where you want to get to.  It’s worth taking time at the start to work out where your prospects hang out on the internet (it’s quite a big place) and how they prefer to interact.

Mistake 2: No Priority
Many people view networking online as unimportant.  It certainly doesn’t feel like “big business” and you aren’t getting a breakfast at 6 in the morning.  However, once you have your strategy, you need to make it happen.  It may never become your not your top priority, but it should be important enough to warrant dedicated time every day. Especially if your competitors are.

Mistake 3: No Focus
There are hundreds of different social web sites so it’s important to identify the key sites that you want to focus on.  Learn how they work and how to get the best out of them.  Don’t just get sidetracked by new, cool-looking  sites if they don’t fit into your strategy first. We’ll be keeping you informed of the best places we find to network and how to use them.

If you keep these 3 points in mind when considering your online marketing efforts, you’ll build your business on firm foundations rather than making these top 3 newbie mistakes.