Social Media Marketing - Why it's not working for your business?

Social media marketing and social networking are superb marketing tools…if they’re used right, use them wrong and they can be a waste of time.


If you’re one of those people who say “Tried it. Social media doesn’t work for my business.”, here are some reasons why you might not be seeing success.

You don’t have a plan.


Social media is marketing, and successful marketing requires a plan. Random tweeting or posting is a waste of time and effort.


You don’t have a target audience that you want to engage (you would if you had a plan!).


Pretty tough to know what to post if you don’t know what your followers are interested in. Remember you are the expert in your business, post interesting tips about your biz and industry.


You’re all about self-promotion.


This is about as effective as thinking networking is all about telling everyone why they should buy from you. If the bulk of your posts include “I” or “me”, you may want to fix them.


You don’t get the “social” part of social media/networking.


Being social requires some sort of interaction…..like sharing and connecting. Commenting on other people’s posts, retweeting, sharing posts that you find interesting, sharing posts that might help someone else, responding when a friend asks a question. If you’re not doing that, you’re doing “solo” media. Lots of luck with that!


You’re not following anyone.


We don’t go along with the “follow everyone who follows you” theory, but we do know that we learn a lot from following the right people (those who tweet about what we're interested in or fun quirky things). So we're always looking for interesting people to follow. And we periodically go through oury new followers to see if we want to follow them in return.


You’re boring people.


If your posts aren’t of interest to your followers, why should they follow you? Or recommend that others follow you? Your network will stagnate. Make your posts and tweets interesting, timely and relevant. If your goal is to gain visibility as a graphic design expert, talk about graphic design and related topics. Trends you’re seeing (or reading about). Helpful tips for prospective clients. And don’t be afraid to throw in the occasional quirky post just to make it fun. Posts that make people smile get shared.


You’re inconsistent.


It’s not necessary to tweet daily….but it doesn’t hurt. I’ve read some tips that say 4 times a day is optimum but that’s assuming you have something of value to tweet about. Watch the people who have a lot of followers, and see what they tweet about and how often. Same goes for Facebook. Don’t post and then disappear for a month. Your followers will do the same.


And don’t forget that your ranking in Google is affected by Twitter and Facebook. The more you tweet and post, the more Google finds you and the higher you appear in search.


You over post and tweet endlessly.


If you have logged on to Twitter or facebook only to find numerous tweets in a row from one person, then you know how annoying that is. Try and space your tweets and posts out during the day. Don’t fill your followers newsfeeds with you you you. They will hide you, immediately.


You forgot about keywords.


One of the best things about Facebook and Twitter is that your posts and tweets get picked up by Google. This not only gives you more visibility but moves your rankings up. Always use keywords in your posts and profiles , this is how people will find you.


You’re using an auto responder to thank people for following you.


Yes, auto responders are convenient and oh so appealing to save time, BUT we are typically following you because we think you may tweet something interesting. Jamming up our email with messages that say “thanks for following me” or “have a good day” are nice and all but hold no value. They’re automatically generated so it’s not like you’re sending them to connect with us.


You’re pretending to connect but you’re really all about selling.


After receiving a nice invite to connect, you say "ok I would love to connect", and the next thing you know you are given the big pitch. That is not connecting, that is being sold.


You’re not being authentic.


Authenticity and transparency are two of the key attributes for a solid social media/social networking connection. Try and portray yourself as someone you’re not, and you’ll get called on it.


You’re not big on sharing.


Since that’s pretty much what social networking is all about, if you ‘re not into sharing, you shouldn’t be here.