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Nellie Akalp is the CEO of CorpNet.com, an online legal document filing service, where she helps entrepreneurs incorporate or form an LLC for their new businesses. Connect with Nellie on Twitter or visit her free resource center.
It’s hard to go anywhere these days and not be bombarded with social media. That’s because Facebook has 900 million active users, there are more than 200 million Twitter users, and then there’s Pinterest, the latest darling.
Given this reality, it’s impossible for small business owners not to feel a sense of urgency to master the social media landscape. But in the rush to join the social media party some small businesses are making critical mistakes. Here are five common errors that small businesses make when it comes to social media and how to avoid them.
1. Social Isn’t the Place for the Hard Sell
This might be the most difficult lesson for the small business owner. After all, we don’t have large marketing budgets to waste. Every dollar must count and we’ve been trained to close every potential sale. However, the social universe requires a subtler approach. This means no BUY ME buttons or blatant promotional copy.
In fact, if your social media strategy is just about marketing or sales, then you’re not approaching it right. Yes, you can use social media for marketing and you can increase your sales figures from it, but it can’t be your focus 100% of the time. As a general rule of thumb, only 5% to 10% of your social media activity (i.e. status updates or tweets) should be self-promotional.
Social media is all about building relationships and growing trust. This means answering questions, providing helpful information, and serving as a trusted resource. These activities should grow your bottom line, but it can be a slower, more nuanced, and potentially more fruitful journey than you’be come to expect. For this reason, it’s important to realize that social media shouldn’t replace all your other traditional marketing practices. It’s okay to ask for the sale, just not in social channels.
2. Social Isn’t About Self-Promotion
You know how painful it is to be stuck at a cocktail party, talking to that self-absorbed person who only talks about him or herself. Small businesses need to treat social media like a cocktail party among friends. To be liked, you’ve got to be gracious, genuinely interested in others, and not dominate the conversation.
What does this mean? Make it easy for people to leave comments on your blog. Engage with everyone who posts on your wall (within reason). Share great content from others in the industry. Ask questions and encourage participation. And most importantly, recognize that sometimes it’s better to talk less and listen more.
3. You Don’t Have to be Everywhere
There are two facts to keep in mind when it comes to social media and small business. First, there will always be a new network to get involved with. Secondly, a small business owner has a limited amount of time and money to devote to social media.
Fortunately, doing social media well doesn’t mean you need to be anywhere and everywhere. Instead, it’s about choosing one or two of the most relevant and effective channels for reaching your customers and focusing on them.
Remember that a neglected social media presence will reflect poorly on your business. It’s actually better to not have an account if you don’t have the time and resources to actively manage it and participate.
4. You Don’t Have to Keep up With the Big Brands
If you’re running a small business, you know there’s a big difference between your budget and that of Virgin America or Starbucks. That’s OK. Your small business doesn’t need to try to keep up with these big brands — particularly when it comes to contests and campaigns.
Creating giveaways and contests is one of the most effective ways to generate new likes and improve overall engagement. But small businesses often feel the pressure to offer flashy prizes that are well beyond their budget.
For example, for your small business, don’t give away a bunch of iPads if that’s not what you can afford. Instead, consider giving away one of your company’s services. It’s definitely not the sexiest prize and won’t generate widespread interest, but it’s more budget friendly and everyone who participates is sure to be interested in what your company does.
5. Social Media isn’t “Free”
Sure, you don’t have to spend a dime to join Facebook, create a Twitter account, or start a blog. That’s great news for the small business. However, social media is far from free once you factor in the blood, sweat, and tears it demands. Social media requires constant commitment, from keeping fresh content on your accounts to engaging your community.
Unless you consider your time (or the time of your employees) worthless, then there’s a significant cost involved with social media. For example, if it takes one employee approximately ten hours a week to manage social media accounts, you can assign a hard cost to the effort. The key takeaway is any small business owner needs to understand the numbers behind every campaign, and that means factoring in everyone’s time and effort.
Do any of these pitfalls look familiar to you? Have you struggled with or seen other social media challenges?
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, logorilla
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Couldn’t have said better! This a great list of things to consider! There are far too many small businesses who create social media profiles just for the sake of being there and then leave them unattended. I think it’s better not to be registered on every site you know, if you are not planning to spend time on it.
Thanks so much for reading my post and truly appreciate your support and kinds words!
It is no longer “if” you do social Media, it is now how well do you do Social Media that counts!
Eric Quit
A Electronic Cigarette
http://AElectronicCigarette.com
Well said! Thanks again for your support and reading my post!
Dear Tech Writers,
Please, for the love of pete, will you PLEASE stop saying that Facebook has 900 Million ACTIVE users? That’s a complete crock, and you KNOW it! You know, as wel as the rest of us, that there are people, and corporations, with MULTIPLE accounts, so I would put the number of “active” users at MAYBE half that. Quit being sheep.
Sincerely,
The Rational World
Hey Phil,
While I appreciate (and endorse) your healthy sense of skepticism, Facebook’s metrics are actually the best in the business. Their ‘active users’ count doesn’t factor in pages – corporate accounts – and it only counts users that have logged on in the past thirty days. As of last year, they even had 500 million (half a billion) people log on in the space of a single day, well over half of their current total active users.
Although you’re right that their are multiple accounts and fake accounts on the service, they’re working to bring down those accounts – they ban about 20,000 users every day, circa 2011. I would argue that fake accounts make up an underwhelming portion of their user count.
source:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/zuckerberg-500-million-daily-active-users-on-facebook/3928
Best,
Dan
I apologize, I read your name initially as “PhilDeaux” – clever name :)
Great summary – we find it’s all about managing the expectations of small businesses. We spend a lot of time explaining that while social media is essential, it is about communication, an upgrade from the telephone with lots of clever networking features! You wouldn’t phone a client and spend the entire time pitching to them – you’d work to build the client relationship, ask about their holiday, how business is going. Same goes for social media. Once clients understand the relevant channels and the real value of interaction we are home and dry.
Wish more people would realise social media is not free. The time commitment can be a big cost to a small business. That’s why we’ve developed social media management services to help, which are proving very popular!
Some of these are fairly obvious mistakes, yet they do seem to get forgotten. Particlarly number 3. There is a misconception that you need to be on every platform, when all you need to do is concentrate on a couple.
Where I work, we each take a platform and we are responsible for the up-keep of that. It gives us all the chance to express our own personalities but still let the company voice shine through. It is only when we are running campaigns that we pull together and push it out across all the platforms. There is no confusion, as we are all ‘experts’ for a particular platform and it allows us to touch base with our target audience across the board.
As for trying to keep up with the big brands, I couldn’t agree more. There is no point looking at what they are doing and think you can do the same. There isn’t the time or budget! It would be nice though.
like how you guys are organised at work and different ppl becoming experts for different platforms, allowing individual personalities to be expressed yet allowing the voice of the company to shine through..brilliant stuff and thanks for sharing!
All so true. Thanks. “Focus on what’s important”. I’ve been learning a lot from some really good sources. Mashable being among the top.
Great article & good advice…especially the point of not having to be everywhere.
Oh the irony! A Mashable story on Social Media mistakes, filled with spam and spam backlinks?
LOL
It’s so true – nothing is worse than constant self promotion on social media. The whole point is to keep it social. I actually wrote a blog post to the point that social networking SHOULD be treated like a cocktail party, which you can check out here: http://www.inkhouse.net/how-social-media-networking-is-like-attending-a-cocktail-party/
This is a wonderful article. I’ve been working in social media for about two years now, and I’ve seen all of these mistakes a hundred times!! Nobody wants to be bombarded with “buy me, click me, visit me, pay me” on their newsfeed every ten minutes by the brands they follow. Every small business who wants to engage in social media should read this… Invaluable advice, and well written!
So true Nellie. I often unfollow people who keep doing the hard sell. For me Social Media is about engagement, sharing useful information, chatting and helping people out if they need it. Imagine you are sitting opposite someone and every other sentence is “why don’t you buy this from me?” Would be pretty boring, repetitive and a huge turn off. Thanks for sharing such a great post :)
Thanks Sian! I do the same…thanks agian for reading my post and for all of your support!
What a great post Nellie! You are so right about these mistakes. I especially like the no hard selling or self promotion–what a turn off those are. Thanks so much for sharing. http://gretchenpritts.com
Well said. Agree most with 1 and 3. Social networks are not a place to hard sell, to market, yes but hard selling – no. It should be done on personally or on the telephone, this is to avoid miscommunication with prospects.
Also, we do not need to be on every social network out there. Be active to a few where your prospects usually are. Invest your time on these and engage with the community.
Nellie, Great article. Just to add, I think the most important thing is to always remember that, above all else, we need to provide relevant and useful content for our target audience.The needs of the audience should always come first, this is what will keep them coming back for more.
The Idea Peddler
http://nasserismail.blogspot.com
I was laughing my head off yesterday about a post on Oatmeal, and it kinda hits this subject, hope you allow me to share, just too funny: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_likes
Have a happy one.
Richard
http://www.bizzwall.com
Great article Nellie. It’s the fresh content issue that I hear small UK based businesses struggle with. Unfortunately it is still occurring that this is a five-minute wonder, and most Co’s start blogging/Tweeting/updating status’, then get bored or don’t feel motivated. Hopefully this will change as Social Media is here to stay, and playing an increasingly more prominent role in the marketing mix.
Hey that’s really a nice post. Guys do check out SocialAppsHQ’s blog at -http://blog.socialappshq.com/
Go & have a look to get more insights on Facebook app & social media marketing.
I definitely think the smaller brands should be watching how the bigger brands do their social because they have the budgets for it and usually put a good amount of effort into it.
Great article. I know a lot of people with small businesses and this advice is definitely worth the read. Especially about not having to be everywhere and how a neglected account can hurt you. Will pass this information along.
Very good article we focus on the major ones or the ones relevant to the business we are working for. check out our latest article at http://idsdesignz.com/5-powerful-search-engine-optimization-tips-for-better-search-engine-placement/
I liked the article, but I do not completely buy it. Blood, sweat and guts are not cutting it anymore. You have to spend on resources and real dollars promoting your channels. Engaging posts or clever stunts won’t always work. You need to included some help from promotional elements and social ads. Otherwise, your clever ideas and messaging would likely fizzle into thin air reaching no one.
I couldn’t agree more! Many people are so quick to jump on these hot tickets in order to “stay in competitive” when in reality, they are simply undermining their own reputation by incorrectly branding themselves or offer nothing of value to the conversation. If a company, small or large, wants to get in on the Social Media party, they need to find an authentic way. Providing clients and potential clients with valuable information and industry realted material will build their reputation and encourage others to join as well.
It has been a learning process for us. We are a boutique career management and recruiting firm playing on a large field. Leveraging our social media presence to the best of our ability has not only increased business but kept us in touch with past clients who continue to want to be “on our radar” and rely on us to provide valuable industry related information. We have been able to stay competitive, be successful and keep the value of our name.
V. Willenberg
http://www.turningpointsearch.net
great post Nellie! simple and to the point, will be sharing your article to the small biz owners that we serve :)