Kim Walsh-Phillips: The Mistakes Most Businesses Are Making With Their Social Media

“The fact is, that most of your peers are blind mice, leading other blind mice.”

— Dan Kennedy

When it comes to most types of marketing and especially social media, most of your competitors, if not all, are doing it wrong. Copying them will bring you the same abysmal results they are getting.

For a glimpse into what is a complete waste of time, here are the top mistakes businesses make with their social media:

1. Focusing on followers, not qualified prospects. I don’t care if you have one million Facebook fans. The reality is, if none of them convert to customers, you might as well delete your account. The purpose of your social media marketing should be to drive qualified leads into your marketing funnel so you can convert them to customers, retain your current customers, grow their sales and receive qualified introductions to new customers. Stray from this and your ROI on social media marketing will decrease greatly.

2. It’s all about the brand, not the prospect. By choosing to follow you, your prospects are agreeing to give up valuable real estate in their newsfeeds and to read what you have to say. Why would they want to do this if all you were going to do is try and sell to them? Instead, your social media profiles, designs and content should focus around the needs and pains of your prospects and give them compelling reasons to want to connect and remain engaged with you.

3. Trying to sell within the network. Yes, your social media should lead to sales, but you will fail if you try to make this the purpose of your page posts. Instead, your goal should be to collect the contact information of your social media followers so you can put them into your marketing funnel and contact them in another media channel in order to make the sale.

4. Asking before giving. Great marketing is about creating great relationships with your customers. This is quite different from one-time transactions. Your audience is there to learn valuable information and content from you. Give them what they can use before asking them to buy anything, share anything or do anything for you.
5. Not engaging in a conversation. Social media should be that, social. Ask questions, look for feedback, answer comments, feature followers. Act like a human, not a robot.

6. Posting the same promotions on social media as everywhere else. Your social media network is one of your most valuable because when they engage with you, they do so surrounded by their friends and family, sharing with them instantly their relationship with you and introducing you to their inner circle. Stop giving them the same perks as everyone else and start coming up with rewards, promotions and surprises no one else gets.

Stop copying everyone else, and start getting a high return on your investment of time and money online.

To discover how to create your own automated Facebook Sales System, sign up now for the upcoming free webinar with Steve Sipress and Kim Walsh-Phillips on Thursday, September 26th at 1:00pm Central Time at:

www.IOCreativeGroup.com/facebooksalesevent.

photo credit: zhouxuan12345678 via photopin cc