Social Web gave marketers great tools for engagement with potential customers. On the other hand, poorly executed social media marketing can have the worst results for your brand. There are a lot of ways to get your social media marketing wrong.
Here is a list of 5 NOT "to do's".
No Call-To-Action (CTA)
If you want to be ineffective in your social media marketing, just don't put calls-to-action in your content. A CTA is the message which tells your readers what you want them to do. A beautiful picture of a room in a hotel Facebook page, for example, should include a CTA for booking this room. Some think that a CTA is too promotional for social media marketing, but that's not the case at all. At the end of the day, everyone wants to get value and make money from this and there should be a balance between informative and non-promotional posts vs promotional content.
Automate your posting
Posting the same content across all social media platforms? It seems handy, but it's not a good idea. All platforms have different "rules". #Hashtags on Twitter and Instagram is a way to find new content, whereas on Facebook means nothing. The place for animated gifs? Check out Tumblr. Infographics do better on Pinterest and Vine is the new thing for 6sec looped videos. Respect the psychology of each platform and ensure that each one offers unique value. A little automation can be helpful, but if your social channels are all identical then why would anyone want to follow more than one of them?
Making it too formal
Some companies have social media channels that are simply too formal and forget the social aspect of the web. Your Twitter feed shouldn't be a distribution channel for another press release. Acting professionally, should not stop you from being conversational and engaging.
Laugh at Promoted Posts
Times have changed and a post of your Facebook page is only seen by a fraction of its followers. It used to be that you really didn't need sponsored posts if your content was solid and stellar. It's true that there's the need to boost a few important posts with some paid sponsorship. Not every single one post, but a few strategic ones.
Too much information
Humanizing your business in the notion of social media is one of the factors that matters the most.
Sharing some behind-the-scenes photos, videos, or stories can be effective here, but there is a fine line between being human and simply betraying too much information. Be strategic in your behind-the-scenes posts.
