Why so many companies get social media wrong

It’s actually quite amazing how many businesses completely miss the whole concept of social, well, being social. You wouldn’t go to your local pub, shout out about how great you are, ask people to buy your product and then leave. That idea is like something from a sketch show, so why oh why do we think we can do exactly that on social platforms?

I get it, it’s tricky, you don’t know what to post and you aren’t 100% sure how to embrace social. It can be daunting if it’s not something you are familiar with, after all once you post something it’s out there forever, you can’t take it back and embarking on it the wrong way can damage your business rather than do it some good.

The main reason for ‘dong’ social badly is purely lack of understanding around the matter, I don’t think anyone purposely sets out to hash it up, or even worse be seen as boring and not worth following. No one is going to want to follow a company that is advertising to them all the time, would you? There’s no value in that!

Here are my top ways in which people get it completely wrong, if you recognise yourself here, don’t worry – you CAN turn it around!

• Posting adverts for products and services and doing nothing else.
• Telling everyone how fabulous your brand/business, no one really cares!
• Posting like mad for a month and then doing nothing for the next 6
• Sharing content that you’ve not taken the time to read and making assumptions.
• Not researching your audience and understanding what THEY want to know about
• Being boring and lacking personality
• Being the opposite of boring and coming across as inappropriate or even offensive to your audience.
• Sharing personal information i.e. talking about your crap boss/customer online, even if you don’t use names they will probably find out.
• Being negative
• Not responding to comments, likes, shares.
• Being political
• Not taking time to comment, share or engage with other people’s/company’s posts. If you want to connect with someone, the best way is to engage with their content!

It’s a pretty long list eh! I bet you could come up with some others to add to it to.

Look, I’m not saying you can’t make mistakes and that everything you ever post is going to change someone’s life. But do consider the pub scenario. If you were walking into a pub and meeting a group of business people, think about how you would interact with them, you would engage in conversation right. You might mention your product but it wouldn’t be all you talked about. You might offer advice to someone who asked, you might ask them questions or share something interesting you saw in the news. It’s SOCIAL media, if you remember that, then you can’t go too far wrong.