One of our classic newsletters… which received a great reaction when we first posted it out in August 2011
We get a lot of new followers each day at Altrincham HQ on twitter. So often we are seeing companies forget everything they’ve learnt with traditional old media (i.e newspapers advertisements / PR / flyer disttribution) when adopting to new social media
Over the past 12 years i’ve used web marketing for my businesses and for the last 6 years Social Media has been an integral part of that
Here we offer a few of our recent bugbears we’ve seen being adopted of late
ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA – WHAT NOT TO DO?
BUYING FOLLOWERS MEANS BYE BYE FOLLOWERS
Did you know that if you pay random companies a “not insignificant amount of money” that can actually buy twitter followers or facebook likes? Sounds great doesn’t it, but what sounds too good to be true usually is
We recently witnessed a local companies followers shoot up from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand followers literally in weeks. On investigation we found their followers had jumped up by exactly the same amount every single day and that those new followers were spread internationally and weren’t exactly active tweeters (more the beautiful babe from Chicago spam account type)
So looks great having 2000+ followers but A) None of them will ever convert to customers and B) Most of them aren’t real twitter accounts
Remember the motto – 1 real follower is better than 1000 fake followers or spam followers
AGGRESSIVE SOCIAL MEDIA – THE DINNER PARTY RULE
You have that moment at a dinner party where somebody brings up politics or religion and the whole night turns into much more than a heated debate – but a full on argument
While your personality should show through online – Twitter and Facebook for business is not your personal soapbox and just as you wouldn’t take an aggressive stance offline in your business premises don’t take it online
Choose when you go online am I representing myself as a person or as a business (and if you’re the sole owner of the business it’s harder to do) – but as a business a big no no is starting arguments or being seen as aggressive in business
Softly Softly and pull in the customers…
FAUX SOCIAL MEDIA PERSONALITIES – DON’T FAKE IT
The clue is in the word Social – but you’d be surprised how many people replace the word social with “barrier” just as they did with email, fax and carrier pigeon
We’ve all been there – speaking to somebody online and there’s a friendly rapport building up and further down the line you tweet i’ve just dropped you an email and then silence > no reply on email
Throughout 12 years in business where online marketing has been at the forefront of everything I do, i’ve made it my mission to reply to every personal email even its a thanks but no thanks
Social Media is about meeting new contacts and keeping in touch with existing contacts – but if you adopt a faux attitude and don’t back it up it leaves a bad taste in the mouth with contacts unlikely to consider using your business in the real world
BROADCAST BROADCAST – READ ALL ABOUT IT
Subtle tweets about your business are absolutely fine – but purely broadcasting the same message again and again is not a reason to follow.
Split up you tweets with actual conversations with people, add in what people call “pub banter” inbetween “business talk” and don’t ignore the real world
The worst examples of this were perhaps in the heat of the Manchester riots where tweeters kept broadcasting advertising messages rather than actually being the voice of the community or concerned for those around them
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE RETWEET ME ME ME
You’ve just been followed and you check their timeline and all you see is 25 messages of “Please RT about XYZ – we’ve just opened up in South Manchester” – it hardly inspires you to follow them back even in the business is an area you are interested in
Imagine walking past a shop and an assistant hands you 100 flyers and shouts please hand these out to friends – it just wouldn’t happen, but the above is the online equivalent
There are simply ways to get retweets and if you feel something will resound with your audience simply include RT at the end of a normal tweet
SO WHAT NOW….
Obviously avoid all the above and there are plenty more of Social Media bugbears which i’m sure we’ll cover in future blogs
We find often that businesses either don’t have the time or are scared to look at Social Media ….. or rush straight in and make the common mistakes above
The analogy we always use on the latter is – it’s easy to get a free copy of photoshop or illustrator online, but would you muddle through and mock up an advertisement for the local newspaper yourself … or would you get training or a professional to do it for you
First impressions count and often Social Media is that first impression – so make social media work for you and give us a call or email today to find out how we can help