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How many times have you tried to go about doing social media just to realize that you are not getting the results you deserve. I have been there too and it’s frustrating at times. Now instead of giving up, let’s look at ways we can get out of this mess. I hope the social mistakes listed below provide some insights for your social media presence. Let’s get started

Social media mistake 1 : They told you to connect and you did, but they were the wrong connections:

Ok who has not been down this road. Lots of us have made friends in a hurry because it’s easy to make friends online but overtime you realize that they don’t fit within our circle. Recently while connecting with some awesome network marketers, they advised me to connect with any and everyone, but the truth was I could not fit in with any and everyone. That got me a bit worried whether i was losing the plot. I tried and tried but with no success. Then I took a break and decided to go with my hubby to Rotorua for a break. It’s at Rotorua when speaking to the Maori guide that a thought crossed my mind. I had a choice I could go about ranting and raving about social media to any and everyone or I could talk about social media to a certain class of people who connect with me. You have a choice too. Imagine you are launching a new Pita Food service and you want to advertise the benefits of Pita bread. You can hold a food show for 2000 people to taste your Pita food or you could hold a small show of say 100 and serve them some awesome Pita bread in various ways. The immediate reaction is to feed 2000 people so that you could get your food service brand out there, but what if these 2000 people were students or people with no spending capabilities? What if the 100 people, you serve were people who worked in downtown close to where your store is located and these were busy business people. Who do you think would make your food service famous. Probably the 100 individuals.

So here are a few tips when building your connections through social media:

1. Look for followers of another brand or people in your industry and connect with these Individuals.
2. Join Groups on LinkedIn and facebook that have a similar interest as you. Here you will find the people who will appreciate your brand.
3. Use a service such as Twellow and search for people within your industry by focusing on the location say new zealand for example.
4. Connect with bloggers and influencers within you industry who would appreciate to connect with you. Offer your freebie goodies to this market to build momentum.

Social media mistake 2 : You cover your own individuality by masking yourself as a company or organisation

This is something i have found many entrepreneurs do. We hide our own personality and brand ourselves with the name of our company. If you own a great piece of technology and you have named it say Freedom sure you need Freedom to be famous but what if you as Pat could talk about the love you have for Freedom. Here people would connect with you as Pat and learn about Freedom through Pat. Would that not be awesome? I did this blunder too. When we were setting up friends social network for Indians, my hubby, my bro and myself hide our own personality and branded ourselves to ChillX, we kept talking and connecting with people as ChillX.com till one day it dawned that the reason some of the members connected with us is because of our individual personalities.

Here are a few ways you could get your brand noticed through you
1.On your blog have your own Picture as well.
2. Have links on your Blog that promote your brand page along with your own pages and profile links
3. In your email signature have your brand tag line along with the prominent social media links that promote your brand.
4. On your business card have your social media addresses so that people are aware about you in the online world.
5. On your product packaging make sure to have your social media profiles listed.
6. When you connect on various forums make sure you leave your signature with your profile links.

Social media mistake 3: You start creating social media profiles as a way to build links for search engine optimisation

There are many ways to create a link building strategy from a search engine perspective. Don’t create social media profiles on any and every social networking site. These websites may not be relevant to your industry. This can have a negative impact on your online reputation and brand management.

Social media mistake 4:You send out mixed conflicting signals.

This is one mistake that I did earlier on in my blogging career. I went about the whole concept the wrong way. I was learning so whatever came to mind that i thought i could write about i wrote. This over time started to get a bit messed up as the blog had no focus. I had to turn this around soon as i was losing the momentum with my traffic.

Here are a few ways to avoid this pitfall:

1. If you are a chef stick to what a chef would do best. In other words stick to the same topic that you want your website to be known for.

2. Don’t talk random stuff on your social profiles especially if you are using your personality for branding your business. People can get a bit confused if they see conflicting personalities. Example if on Twitter you speak about the benefits of salads and on your facebook profile you are telling your friends how you hate veggies this may not go down very well.

3. Make sure you have a few keywords within your updates so that this could help you from a search engine optimisation perspective. So for example if you are focusing on salads then speak about the different salads that you recommend for lunch or a specific salad that you prepared in 2 mins, or a salad that you came across in a recipe book that you are planning on trying this weekend.

4. If you are looking at updating all your social profiles in one go then HooteSuite and Socialoomph are great toold to have

Social media mistake 5: Don’t do social media because everyone else is talking about it

Many times we get into a specific advertising space with the hope of making it big. Please don’t waste your time doing this. All that social media will do for you is get you down. Practice social media if you think you can add value. If you cannot then it’s best to employ a person to do this for you. The reason I say this is because if you don’t have the time to share useful insights abut your industry with people they will see through you and will not connect no matter how hard you try. So save yourself the frustration and focus on finding the right person who can enable your brand to connect with your audience.

Social media mistake 6: When people bad mouth you online don’t go on the defensive:

When someone is talking bad about you the immediate reaction is to go head on. Instead within the social media space you need to rationalise and see why this person is talking bad about you. It’s a good idea to have others take up for you rather than you trying to defend your own self.

Choose who you want to be friends with: It’s better to choose who you want to be associated with rather than having to defriend the people who are all noise and self promotion. It’s important to choose wisely. I made this mistake when i got my twitter account setup. I was new to the game and started following people just to build my follower list. In a week i realized how foolish i was and had to unfollow a few due to this mistake. This can be insulting to some so its best to grow your list wisely.

Social media mistake 7: Selling from day one when you setup your social profile:

This is the most disgusting mistake ever. I mean when you setup your offline shop do you go about selling on day one or do you focus on smiling, making your shop look nice,having the right staff in place and greeting customers when they walk into your shop. The same applies in social media, get the basics right before selling to an audience who may not even know you.

Social media mistake 8: Don’t use the same strategy on every social networking site.

Each social media site behaves differently LinkedIn is completely different to twitter or facebook so you need to take time to understand what type of audience is on what social media site, before you create a cookie cutter strategy for all. It’s the same as exhibiting at a social event. You will behave differently at your friends’ party as compared to a seminar where you are the speaker.

Social media mistake 9: Trying to be a celebrity at every social network.

This is not the way to go about social media. I recommend booking your username at various social media websites so that you have your username reserved but don’t go about setting up profiles everywhere as you only have so many hours in a day. Instead focus your time researching the various social media websites and choosing about 5 that you are actively involved with. This will help you stay in focus and manage a better presence. To check if your preferred username is available you could check this on a website such as Knowem.

Social media mistake 10: Not having enough fresh content
I am not saying that you need to be constantly updating your status what I recommend though is adding fresh valuable content to your blog or social profiles often. Remember if you like a specific person you want to know more about that person. If you don’t hear from this person for a long time most probably you will have moved on, the same applies to your social profile. You get followers because of a reason, they want to connect with you, if you let your account sit idle – they’ll probably will move on.

It’s also important to note though that you cannot go about spamming your followers just because you have to have regular updates, this may be an information overload and they may run away from you. Here the rationale is the same with dating you cannot over do it or you will lose your date.

So have you made any social media mistakes? if yes what did you do to fix it. Please do share your story as well.

Thank you for reading this post. I hope i was able to add some value. Should you think I am worth spending time with please do subscribe to my daily blog.