social media mistakes

7 Warning Signs That Your Social Media Strategy Isn’t Working

March 25, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media has made it easier than ever before for someone to grow an authority around a passion. Millions of the people who have embraced social media use it to promote their businesses, spread the word about their blog posts, and lead people to product pages. These people create social media strategies in the attempt to grow their authorities on the web.

Out of all of the social media strategies that get implemented, only a few of them work. Most social media strategies do a few things wrong. In a social media strategy, if a few things get done incorrectly, the entire strategy could get sabotaged. Let’s say you are gaining 100 Twitter followers every day. If you only send one tweet every day and never promote your content, then you are not getting traffic to your blog which could lead to more revenue and authority on the web.

One of the best ways to do something right is by knowing the warning signs. If you see these warning signs in your social media strategy, then you need to adjust your strategy. If these seven warning signs are within your social media strategy, then you need to adjust that strategy:

#1: You Are Practically Chasing Potential Followers And Likers

This mistake is commonly referred to as begging other people to follow you or like your page and stalking them until the action gets performed. You also get very excited when you get one new follower or one new like. If your social media strategy has this warning sign, it takes too much effort to get a single follower. If you want to build an authority on any social network, it must be easy for you to get followers by the dozens, and eventually, by the hundreds every day.

On Twitter, I would be disappointed if I gained less than 200 followers on any given day. Gaining over 500 Twitter followers in one day would be a really good day for me. Don’t rejoice over gaining a single follower because that indicates slow growth. Instead, rejoice over the big milestones. Rejoice over getting dozens of daily followers, then hundreds of daily followers, and if you absolutely crush it on social media, thousands of daily followers.

#2: You Don’t Have An End Goal

What is the point of growing your social media audience? If you can’t answer this question, then this warning sign applies to your social media strategy. You need to identify the benefit of growing your social media presence. Sure, social proof is good, but you need a better reason to grow your social media audience.

I grow my social media audience so I can get more blog traffic, meet new people, and get more subscribers when I promote my landing pages (if you have a landing page, you should promote yours on social media too). There needs to be a purpose behind your actions other than the fact that social media is the big thing.

#3: You Are Not Interacting With Your Followers

Some of the best social media tips are tips for real life. One of those tips is to have a two-sided conversation with your followers. Think of how annoying it would be to listen to a one-sided conversation in real life. One person does all of the talking, and you just listen. You want to say something to the person talking, but it’s a one-sided conversation (oh well).

When people went over to social media, they forgot to properly carry over this important concept. Most social media posts are one-sided conversations in which people post what is on their minds without thinking about interacting with their followers. If someone posts a relevant response to one of your social media posts, you need to respond to that person. The strongest relationships that develop via social media start with interaction.

The [tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/1wATJc9″]The strongest relationships that develop via #socialmedia start with interaction.[/tweetthis]

#4: Your Posts Are Not Getting A Lot Of Engagement

One of the reasons people go after large audiences on social media is to spread the word about what they do. In order to use social media to spread the word about what you do, your followers need to engage with your content. If your followers are not engaging with your content, then your audience size is just a number that doesn’t mean anything. 1 real follower is better than 100,000 fake ones.

If your posts are not getting a lot of engagement, then you are probably not reaching your goals for your social media strategy. You need people to share your content to have an impact on social media.

#5: Your Strategy Is Taking Up Too Much Time

Social media is a way to promote the pages that build relationships and bring more revenue for you. Social media is not a giant cash machine. Although you should focus part of your time on your social media strategy, you also need to focus your time on revenue generating activities. If your strategy takes up hours of your time every day, then you need to shorten it. You can eliminate certain processes and buy upgraded tools with more features (i.e. HootSuite Pro) to save time. Time is money.

#6: You Are Often Using Social Media To Promote Your Products

Red flag! Social media is not the place to promote your products and make the extra buck. Social media is the place to build relationships with like-minded people. You get the revenue from social media when you promote your blog, and the blog visitor either decides to buy a product he sees right away or subscribes to your blog and buys a product down the road. You can occasionally promote your products on social media, but you should only promote a product in a meaningful way. Kim Garst did that well with these tweets about her latest book.

#7: You Aren’t Making Yourself Different

Why would someone follow you instead of the other person in your niche? I don’t know for you exactly, but you must know why you would get people to follow you instead of someone else in your niche. You need to make yourself different from other people and present yourself in a way that encourages more people to follow you. Your bio needs to let people know why you are different in a concise manner. You can be different for the value you produce, having circumstances that most people don’t have, being something that most people are not, having a high level of credibility, or something else that makes you stand out. Standing out will help you build an authority on the web.

Not only is it important to make yourself different so you grow your audience, but if you make yourself different, your followers will remember you. Social media is a very noisy place where it is easy to be forgotten. If the people who view your social media account see you as a unique individual, then these people will remember who you are, visit your blog, and eventually buy your products.

In Conclusion

Chances are you know which warning signs apply to your social media strategy. At this stage of the game, there are only two choices. The first choice is to accept your social media strategy as it is, not address any of the warning signs, and not see dramatic growth. The second (better) choice is to address any of the warning signs that affect your social media strategy and stop them before those warning signs turn into your strategy’s danger. By addressing and fixing the flaws, you will move forward with your social media strategy and authority development.

Which warning signs apply to you? Do you have any additional warning signs that you would like to warn people about? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

4 Common Misconceptions About Social Media

August 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media has been proven to be a powerhouse for many people’s business strategies. Social media is the primary way to grow your blog’s traffic, connect with customers, and interact with others. However, not everyone is getting the desired amount of traffic from their social networks. While some people get hundreds of daily visitors from their social networks, others struggle to get five daily visitors from their social networks. What’s the difference? Chances are the people who are not getting as many traffic and customer connections on social media are going by these four misconceptions.

Do everything you can to be like a celebrity. When people think of a celebrity, they think of someone with over 1 million followers who is only following 100 people. However, there are only two reasons these celebrities have reached that point. Either the entire world knew about the celebrity before Twitter or these people bought fake followers. In fact, most celebrities with millions of real followers also bought millions of fake followers to make themselves look bigger than they really are. Chances are you won’t get this status. It is a status rewarded to a select few with a lot of popularity. I wanted to get the celebrity status but quickly found myself stuck at 1,667 followers. After deciding to follow other people, my follower number, blog traffic, and sales soared. It’s okay to follow other people even if that means following thousands of other people. Some of the people you follow may become your next customers.
Send out a random number of posts at random times every day. By sending out a random number of posts at random times every day, the responses you get from those posts will also be random. You may send out a post at 7 pm, but your followers may be logged in at 6 pm. That means you lost people by sending the post at the wrong time. I always schedule tweets with HootSuite so I am able to tweet once every 20 minutes. Some social media platforms work differently, but on Twitter, I am able to send out one tweet every 20 minutes without annoying people. If you are not ready to send out one post every 20 minutes, what you need to do is schedule your posts when most of your followers are on the social network. Facebook Insights allows you to see when most of your fans are on Facebook, and Tweriod allows you to see when most of your followers are on Twitter.
Not posting about yourself enough. There are numerous articles on the web that suggest only tweeting about your blog 20% of the time. However, that is not nearly enough times to get more visibility. If your blog posts are valuable, then your followers will not care about whether you only tweet about or only share links on Facebook that go to your blog posts. If your blog posts are valuable, and your followers are the targeted people who would enjoy reading those blog posts, you can share them more often. I share my blog posts on Twitter about 90% of the time.
Automating all of your posts. Some of the people who schedule their social media posts do that just so they don’t have to log into the social network. However, automating all of your posts prevents you from interacting with your followers. Asking a question at the moment is an easy way to get more feedback. One of the answers may teach you something new. In addition to asking questions, you can thank people for sharing your blog posts or buying your products. There are plenty of ways to interact with your social media followers, but regardless of how you interact, interaction is essential towards your success on social media.

Were you deceived by the misconceptions? Please share your thoughts below.

The Five Worst Social Media Tips You Will Ever Hear

July 25, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

In the big, complex world of social media, there are now thousands of social media experts. Some social media experts are very popular while others are finding their way. With thousands of people sharing advice on the same topic, there will be perspectives and methods that contradict each other. As a result, some people hear poor advice and end up implementing the wrong methods, or they implement the right methods in the wrong way.

This results in frustration because people are not getting the results they expected to get. Instead of having to guess whether certain methods are good or bad, I am going to provide for you a list of five of the worst social media tips you will ever hear. By knowing the mistakes now, you won’t make them later.

Only be on one social network. If you are only on one social network, then you are not able to utilize the advantages of the other social networks. 80% of pins on Pinterest are repins which means you can take advantage of how easy it is to spread on Pinterest. You can use Twitter to take advantage of concise conversations that allow you to build stronger connections with your followers every day. Then there’s YouTube which allow you to take the advantage of being able to upload your own videos. Relying on one social network to grow your social media audience is no longer an option. You can have your best social network (for me, that would be Twitter), but do not just rely on one social network.
Be omnipresent on all of the social networks. I plead guilty to using this tip. Omnipresent means being active on every social network including Kik, Yelp, and all of the other ones. Instead, that should be rephrased to be omnipresent on all of the big players. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, and GooglePlus are some of the big players.
Don’t post too much. I used to reluctantly tweet every hour because I thought people would not like that I post too much. I thought I was going to get more unfollows and see my follower count spiral downward. However, after trying it out, I ended up gaining followers. On Twitter, I now tweet once every 20 minutes. Not only do I get more followers, but I also get more engagement.
Respond to everyone. No matter how valuable your content is or how remarkable your story is, you will get two kinds of people: the haters and the spammers. Some people will be jealous of your success and be quick to shoot you down. These people will say things like “Your blog post was the worst thing I have ever read!” In addition, spammers are very common on any social network. Here is the typical example of a spammer on Twitter, “CLICK here to learn how I gain 550 FOLLOWERS every day,” and most people who tweet that have well under 1,000 followers. There is no reason to respond to these people because you will not be able to build the type of conversation with these people that evolves into a strong connection and potential sales.
Do not follow many people. People do not know about you unless they hear about you. Clicking the follow button and following other people is a way for them to hear about you. If you want to be one of those people with 1 million followers who is only following a few of your best friends, the chances of that happening are unlikely. I’m not saying it’s impossible (some people have already done this), but you need to be famous in order to get that kind of attention without having to follow a lot of people. There was a point when I was following 12 people and had 1,667 followers. The problem with that was I did not get past 1,700 followers for about three months. Think about that. It took me 3 months to get 33 new followers. That’s horrible, and that primarily happens because I did not follow anyone within that span of time.

Now that you know the five worst social media tips, you know what you need to avoid. I did not make all five of these mistakes simultaneously, but I have made them all throughout my career. Identifying these mistakes allowed me to go on a better path and get better results for the time I put into social media. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional mistakes that you would like to mention? Please share your thoughts and advice below.