9 B2B Social Media Errors to Understand Before Jumping in

Sep. 20, 2010

Jump in the Social Media Pool Most businesses either already are, or are thinking about, taking part in social media. They've heard that social media can have an enormous impact on their lead nurturing and relationship building and that it can help them with their targeted customer acquisition, and all of these things are true, but they're not, unfortunately, a given. Many companies jump into social media without really understanding what they should be doing and as a result they often make the 9 mistakes we've listed below without realizing it. If your company is making one or many of the mistakes on this list, you may be reducing the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

You didn’t do your background research! It is essential when your deciding whether or not to get involved in social media that you understand several things about your clients and target audience including:

- If/where they interact with social media
- What they are looking for
- Whether or not this information works to promote your overall business strategy.

If you cannot successful determine the answers to any of these questions you probably shouldn’t be getting involved in social media in the first place.
You don’t define what you want to measure. Before you can develop a relevant social media strategy, you need to establish your businesses’ social media KPIs. KPI stands for key performance indicator and these are essential aspects of any marketing initiative. KPIs could be made up of benchmark data, targets or time frames.
You didn’t set aside the appropriate resources. Social media takes a lot of time and resources. If you can’t or won’t set aside the time, people, content developers necessary for a relevant web presence, then you’re most likely not ready to jump into the social media sphere.
You don’t offer valuable content. Your social media followers are monitoring your updates because they feel like you have something to offer them. A company that does nothing but spout organization-specific content won’t garner a relevant following or build relationships. Your followers are looking for content that educates and informs them on a wide variety of industry data. Make sure you give it to them!
Your profiles aren’t optimized. Did you know that you can optimize your social media profiles for SEO? If not, you can get some tips from our article on marketing your business using LinkedIn.
You don’t integrate your social media with your other marketing tactics. Social media alone isn’t enough. To achieve strong social media results and ROI you need to integrate your campaigns with your other marketing initiatives like email, content development and webinars to cross-promote and share your though-leadership content.
You expected instant results. Social media most likely won’t provide you with immediate ROI. The power of social media is to help you create long term, relevant relationships with prospects and customers to help you nurture leads into sales and start conversations.
You’re not monitoring your social media presence. You can’t just set up a social media account and leave it, regardless of how many “great” tools you found to automate your updates. One of the most important aspects of a worthwhile social media presence is to monitor what’s being said about you so you can respond to comments and concerns and develop real, personal relationships.
You’re talking at your followers not with your followers. You probably think we’ve already mentioned this a few times, and that’s because it is a key aspect of every part of your social media strategy. Social media is not a broadcasting platform, it is meant for starting conversations. So go get talking!