Consumers, in 2017, expect companies to engage with them across social channels. In this article, I’ll address three common mistakes that businesses make with social media marketing. Or are you looking to use social media as an additional customer support channel? Beyond that, think about how to promote your social media channels. What to post in your social profiles depends on your organization and its social strategy. Being responsive when consumers post on your profile is important, especially to the users that post. As an aside, Simply Measured offers a Facebook Customer Service report to help monitor this data if customer service responsiveness is part of your social media strategy. Product and service problems are bound to occur for most companies. However, many organizations now use live video to engage their audience. Think of ways to experiment with live video for your business.
Consumers, in 2017, expect companies to engage with them across social channels. But for many ecommerce businesses, social media management is often overlooked or relegated behind other tasks.
In this article, I’ll address three common mistakes that businesses make with social media marketing.
Mistake 1: Launching without a Strategy
Deciding early on the goals of your social media presence will likely shape your strategy. Are you planning on increasing brand awareness, site traffic, and leads? Or are you looking to use social media as an additional customer support channel? For some businesses, it may be a combination of these, especially as their audience grows.
Once you determine your strategy, identify platforms to use. If your company is focused on lifestyle or fashion, consider Instagram and Pinterest. Both frequently roll out new options to increase sales. Take, for example, Pinterest’s “Shop the Look.” When a Pinterest user clicks the blue dots in an image, a page loads with the exact items in that image, allowing the user to purchase those items.
For retailers that sell items for crafts, hobbies, and do-it-yourself projects, sharing videos and tutorials on YouTube and Facebook would likely work well. This instructional video from Fire Mountain Gems explains how to use its bead products.
For reputation management, it may make initial sense to set up profiles on the major platforms to secure your brand’s name. But don’t feel overwhelmed in thinking you need content for each channel. Try out a two or three of them to see where your audience is engaged and focus from there.
Beyond that, think about how to promote your social media channels. Placements in email are common.
Adding social media links to your website not only helps shoppers find your profiles, but with proper Schema markup these links can also help Google connect your site and social media profiles. The result can help give your organization a knowledge graph on search results, as seen below for Thrive Market. (For more on Google’s Knowledge Graph, read “How to Optimize Knowledge Graph for Your Brand.”)
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