Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Priit Kallas

414 posts

Filed under: Brands, Corporate Social Media, Social Media

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Tags: Engage in conversation, Faking profile, Social Media, social media channels, Social Media crisis, social media legal threats, social media marketing, Social Media Marketing Mistakes, social media Monitoring, social media policy, social media presence

Social media is about people and people like to be treated with respect. If you approach your social media marketing activities with people in mind then you should be OK. Treat people as individuals, be friendly and personal. When the crisis hits stay neutral and address the situation. Concentrate on what you can change, work to find the solution not the scapegoat.

What to keep in mind when dealing with negative feedback in your social media marketing:

• Remember, you do not control the message, sit back and relax. Let your employees and customers talk freely.
• Avoid broadcasting, it’ not another advertising channel. Engage in conversation.
• Monitor your brand’s entire social media presence. Social media channels, blogs, forums and news feeds.
• Don’t think in campaign terms. There’s no end date on your social media activities. Social media is long term.
• Being too “corporate”. People like people and we get it really fast when we are fed another load of crafted marketing messages.
• Make sure that your employee cannot accidentally post personal messages on brand channels (Red Cross).
• Do not lie! Doh!
• Don’t bad mouth others.
• Do not censor user content. This could make a trivial matter into a huge crisis.
• Do not use legal threats to silence customers.
• Be real. Faking customer interaction by hiring an agency (or employee) to pretend to be a brand advocate is not a great way to success.
• Create clear social media policy. What gets deleted? Foul and abusive language, threats against individuals, hate speech, flame comments about products/services
• Create guidelines, what actions to take in case of a wave of negative conversations in social media. Attack against your brand, customer service gone bad, negative rumor.
• How you’ll respond to negative content.
• Who decides what to do with negative comments.
• What’s the worst that can happen? How to respond?
• What should the response times be in different situations.
• Who is the person publicly available and accountable for crisis resolution.
• Do not ignore negative conversations. Watch and be ready to react. You don’t have to respond to every negative mention. Negative product reviews and comparisons with other brands will always be there.

When a negative event occurs keep your emotions in check. Most situations can be solved reasonably. Let the other side know that you understand how they feel and you are going to fix the situation. Never blame others and deal with the problem instead. If your ego is the only thing that gets bruised, let it go.

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Image credit Liam Manic

Posted on: March 23, 2011