Social Media Marketing Pitfalls Every Beginner Should Avoid

If you are contemplating the idea of venturing into social media marketing, there are a couple of pitfalls you need to avoid. Social media marketing when carried out in the appropriate manner can deliver immense returns with little investment and strong systems in place. For this end to be accomplished however, the following must be avoided.

Barefaced Advertising or Spamming

Under the law, spamming is outlined as illegal. This means that if you choose to harvest email addresses from social platforms for the purpose of sending out spam, you will have FTC coming after you. Barefaced advertising is usually associated with emails that market low quality products and if you are to succeed in social media marketing, you don’t want your business categorized in this class. In the event you intend to hire a company to carry this out for you, make sure they provide a well laid out plan on how they intend to go about it. Also, pay attention to what they are doing.

Lack of Tracking Mechanisms

Social media marketing requires you use tracking and numbers for the purpose of witnessing more results. This process is going to cost you money whether you choose to do it yourself or hire a company to look into it. For this reason, the right tracking mechanisms should be placed into place. This gives you the opportunity to compare how different platforms fare. For instance, in cases you have presence on Twitter, Youtube, Linkedln or Facebook, performance results are delivered making it easy for you to determine the one that offers the best results.

In connection to this, if you already have some social media marketing campaigns that are offline like TV commercials or newspaper ads, tracking gives you the opportunity to determine whether to opt for traditional or online marketing. This choice should be made based on the one that offers the highest benefits.

Use of Internet Programs without Value

There are some internet programs that don’t add any value and these should be totally ignored. This might include survey programs that claim to pay you if you get people to sign up with them. This is because the money received from such programs is lower compared to what you have to pay the survey company.

Not Taking Time to Listen

A large number of people carrying out social media marketing started off in the wrong manner. They jumped into buzz sites such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. They did not take time to listen to what the target market wants and as a result, the social media marketing strategy fails miserably. By listening, you might realize that people prefer to hang around the less popular sites like online forums, chat rooms and blogs. Before going off to join any online community, you must be willing to listen and explore the best practices that will make social media marketing a success.

Poor Planning

You have to plan long and carefully before starting social media marketing. Make sure you understand all the aspects involved such as customer support, publicizing of discount offers, sharing of resources and the announcement of new products.