Many businesses have a professional presence on social media and this is quickly becoming the norm as customers want faster, easier access to any given business’s information. Of course a social media presence can be a double edged sword. There’s a lot of pitfalls that come with creating a social media page for your business. Being aware of these pitfalls is key to avoiding them. If you can avoid them, there are many benefits to having a social media page for your business. This includes increasing sales, keeping loyal customers, creating new customers, and expanding your business’s reach.
To start things off I’ll go over some of the main pitfalls that some businesses fall into. You don’t want your business to be one of them so pay close attention. Perhaps the biggest mistake that many businesses make is not creating a solid, consistent strategy to implement when they are on social media. Many people don’t take their social media initiative seriously and believe it’s something that can be tasked to the most menial intern in the company. This could not be farther from the truth! Navigating social media is a serious job with serious impact and consequences. If you aren’t consistent in your strategy your business won’t be able to thrive or reach goals. Customers can also be difficult to handle in this new landscape. They may ask for more transparency or even hold grudges over inappropriate comments that are posted from your business’s page. Remember that anything that’s sent out is permanent. You may be able to delete a post but you won’t be able to delete a view of that post.
Aside from not having an effective, consistent strategy another big mistake is trusting this job to an inexperienced lower-level employee. You may think that it doesn’t take a lot of work to create a social media page for a business but when someone who isn’t professional or trustworthy takes over that position, you’ll see the negative consequences arise pretty quickly. A good way to avoid this is to either hire on an outside professional or train an existing trustworthy employee. A lot of the rules of running a social media page for your business boil down to common sense. If the person in charge of your page is capable, smart, and able to make good decisions on behalf of the company then you shouldn’t have any problems.
Another major mistake that businesses make is being on every single social media platform out there. It might seem like a good idea and a great way to expand your reach but it tends to have the opposite effect. This pitfall goes hand in hand with not having a consistent plan. It’s harder to manage a wide variety of social media pages and can get out of hand pretty quickly. It’s best to focus your social media attention on two, maybe three different platforms.
A good example of how these kinds of social media pages should be run is American Eagle’s Twitter page. Their page showcases bold images that promote their brand, concise customer interaction that’s professional and friendly, and they use it to their advantage when it comes to marketing sales.
If you follow this advice and avoid the aforementioned pitfalls, your business will greatly benefit from running a social media page.
