I see everyone and their mother trying to get involved in Social Media and they assume it is as simple as posting this or that on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. Let me ask you this question, when has anything of quality ever been easy? Here are some reasons I see about 99% of Social Media campaigns doomed to fail.

Goals – Did you consider goals?

When creating an “effective” social media campaign you must have goals and those goals can’t be “to make money and to advertise”. That isn’t a goal…that is a want. A goal is more focused –> To reach new mothers with babies under a year old. THAT is a goal.

You have to create and define goals and create a way to attract, engage and influence your target demographic!

Target Marketing – Reaching the demographics in your goals.

What are your target markets? Saying men and women is way too broad. Your demographics need to broken down and the things to consider are:

• Age
• Interests
• Gender
• Locations
• Personalities
• Customer Needs

You take these basics and create the customer profiles you think you want to attract and then you create goals and strategies to attract these people.

Engagement

When you are randomly posting crap on your profiles do you have any engagement? Are you creating relationships? You cannot have an effective social media campaign if you don’t engage and communicate with followers. Just posting anything does NOTHING. What ever you post on social media profiles should be carefully planned and be aimed at reaching your target markets and meeting your goals! Posting, “we are so great, see our YouTube video” is not engaging. However, “See a video of the work we do with children…do you have any suggestions?” is engaging.

Discuss, offer valuable information, ask questions and create relationships! Create a community or become part of one! Engage.

Influence

Do you have any influence? I can tell you that randomly posting things with no purpose and no goals is no way to influence people.

You are just wasting your time if you do not sit down and consider how you can and will influence your followers. How  can you attract followers that are actually interested in you/your company if you have nothing valuable that influences others?

If you have nothing to offer you influence no one in life or in Social Media.

PLEASE Quit Repeating Yourself

Some Twitter and Facebook streams remind me of this one part of Transformers 2 where Sam says something like, “Ever have this song in your head and it repeats itself, repeats itself, repeats itself…” (I looked everywhere for a video of this FYI). I hate and will run from streams that do the same thing all day long. I hate it and I lose all respect. Real estate people are the worst at this. Repeating yourself shows you have no interest in your followers, you have interest in creating a community or relationships and it shows you are just lazy.

Ignore what I have written today and you are doomed to fail in social media.

Also, these techniques apply to blogging as well. Hire a social media consultant to help you create an effective plan for your social media campaign. Have a nice day 😉 Melissa Fach – SEO Aware