Four E-Commerce Mistakes You Need To Avoid This Holiday Season

If there"s one time of year to kick your email campaign up a notch, it"s over the holidays. Email marketing is a tried-and-true way to advertise upcoming …

Four E-Commerce Mistakes You Need To Avoid This Holiday Season

Email Mistakes that Destroy Click Through Rates

The entire idea behind an email list is simple. You want to sell something. Yes, you want to add value, build your brand, and increase use engagement. But you’re in business and that means you have something to sell.

Derek Halpern, from Social Triggers, says email marketing trumps social media every time. To prove this claim, Halpern sent a sales link to his Twitter followers and the click through rate was 300. Conversely, the same message was sent to his email followers and he received 4200 clicks to his website. Writer Jeff Goins says “email is still the most powerful way to communicate online.”

People check their inbox several times per day, not only on their computers at work but also on their smart phones. If email is so powerful, building a large email list seems to be the answer. Yet what happens when no one is reading your emails or clicking through to your offer?

If you want to increase your sales using the most powerful online communication tool, create a new email strategy and avoid these simple mistakes.

You forgot to ask

Getting someone to click through to your sales offer means they have to read your email. And if you’re not giving them something they want, they won’t even bother reading past the first line.

Danny Ivy, from Mirasee (formerly Firepole Marketing) says that businesses who are serious about engaging with their subscribers take the time to ask what they want to hear. They use surveys to determine what their readers want, then tailor emails to showcase their businesses value. You not only build brand value when you show you’re committed to helping them, but you increase your sales potential as well.  

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Unless your subscriber signed up for a specific offer, you have to remember to build a relationship with the people on your list. It’s simply not enough to be friendly and offer them a discount to your latest offer. Remember that your list is made up of actual people, not just numbers. Ask, engage, and share what your unique list wants to hear. Take the guesswork out of the equation and give the people what they want.

You’re not using the right platform

According to a GetResponse study, 41% of all emails are read on a smartphone. And 42% of those readers delete emails that don’t display correctly on their smart phones.

Creating mobile responsive emails seems like a no-brainer. However, only 25% of marketers optimize their email for mobile devices! If you’re not writing mobile responsive emails you’re basically throwing away half of your email list.

Check with your email provider to see if every single email you write is mobile responsive. They will never click through to your offer if they can’t read your email on the device in their hands.

You’re not in the right folder

Everyone loves Gmail. In fact, there are over 900 million Gmail users in the world. With numbers like that, you can bet that many subscribers on your email list use Gmail.

Google created an email system that is supposed to be user friendly. They created primary, social, and promotions tabs and Gmail’s system sorts your email into whatever category they think is best. And you may end up in the promotions tab next to a million spammy emails that your subscriber will never read.

This Gmail system may be great for users, but it’s been called a “legitimate business nightmare” for email marketers. However, there is something you can do to ensure that your subscribers receive your emails as “primary”. Author James Altucher sends the following message to his new subscribers:

If our emails aren’t getting through to you, you will miss these important updates and you won’t receive the full benefit of being a subscriber. So please follow this quick one-step guide to make sure nothing slips through the cracks:

1) If you are a Gmail user or you use any other web-based email that filters broadcasts away from your main inbox, be sure to “drag” any emails from “James Altucher” into your Priority Inbox. (Again, you don’t want to miss something.)

That message helps highlight the Gmail situation in an easy and friendly way. And don’t send blatant sales pitches if you want your existing Gmail subscribers to see your emails.

Read. Click. Buy.

We all know the percentages. More clicks equals more sales. The key is to write exactly what your subscriber wants to hear on a device they are already reading. And they certainly won’t click on your offer if they never see your email.

If email is the communication powerhouse of the internet, you need to create a marketing strategy tailored to ensure you get the most out of every email you send. None of these tips are difficult to implement. Just remember your goal is to get your subscribers to actually read your offer. Give them what they want and watch your click through rates skyrocket.

Email Mistakes that Destroy Click Through Rates

The 11 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Digital Marketing

The success of digital marketing depends on various factors. It requires understanding your marketing history, knowing what’s being said about your brand, and meeting the needs of your consumers. With so many different factors coming into play to realize digital marketing success, entrepreneurs easily can make mistakes that may hinder early growth in a company.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes.

1. Lack of Audience Understanding

The first thing any successful business person needs is a clear understanding of his or her market.

The gap that a product or service fills is just the beginning. Marketing requires an in-depth understanding of consumer personas. Beyond a prospect’s needs, professionals should focus on how a prospect spends time, what other products or services the prospect likely wants, and where individuals who fit the persona are more likely to be living.

Detailed information about your audience can only make your marketing efforts more pinpointed and accurate.

2. Lack of Planning

Planning and organization are the keys to any type of success. Many marketers never achieve great success because they don’t have clearly outlined goals and a distinct plan of action.

Planning does not mean brainstorming in a room of decision makers. It means writing out an analysis of your current needs, strengths, weaknesses, and goals. It means taking your budget and going through it line by line to determine where your marketing dollars will be best spent. And it means creating a written plan of action and measurement, and referencing all those documents regularly throughout the campaign process.

3. Lack of Focus

You can’t do it all in the beginning.

Marketing campaigns that are small, concerted efforts can be just as effective as large campaigns that aim to reach a wide audience. Start by focusing on the marketing personas your product or service will fit with naturally. Pick measurable goals that align with industry benchmarks you can track over a period of several months.

Long-term goals are vital, too. Seeing meaningful results (even if they aren’t driving the bottom line) can improve momentum for reaching those long-term goals.

4. Unrealistic Expectations

Few marketing campaigns will achieve instantaneous results. Unless your first post goes viral, you’ll likely tweak and improve your pay-per-click, social media, and other digital marketing campaigns as you go.

Social media campaigns tend to have a shorter turnaround time; pay-per-click campaigns tend to be midrange and take about a month and a half to deliver results. SEO strategies tend to take the longest of all. SEO drive campaigns typically take four to six weeks to get off the ground and may take as many as six months to a year to deliver meaningful goals.

Digital marketing is a long race, not a sprint.

5. Unrealistic Budgeting

Many startups fail to allocate a fair amount of money for digital marketing. Though some digital marketing activities can be completed on a shoestring budget, many require a strategic investment. Avoid spending money on tools you aren’t sure will work out for your company, and focus on hiring talent inside and outside the company that can help you reach your goals effectively and efficiently.

6. Too Many Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms are a fun and fast way to develop a marketing campaign, but focusing on too many at once may weaken the overall campaign. Try to keep your social media strategy targeted at two or three social media platforms your audience frequently uses, and regularly deliver relevant information to that demographic.

Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat are great social media platforms to start with. Depending on your business audience, you may also be interested in pursuing a targeted campaign on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest.

Use what makes sense for your brand and market, not necessarily trending platforms.

7. Forgetting the Importance of Content

Content is the foundation of any successful digital marketing campaign. Without relevant, engaging, and insightful content, you can post information all day long and not see measurable results. Video, written, and graphic content that adds value are elements that will convert site visitors into long-term customers. Video content, in particular, is becoming a staple of digital marketing that companies can no longer afford to ignore. Entrepreneurs can start using video content with homegrown campaigns on Snapchat, Vine, and YouTube that are cost-effective and strike a chord with the right audience.

8. Forgetting the Importance of Mobile

The number of global mobile users exceeded desktop users in 2014, and most consumers now use their smartphones to access location information, reviews, websites, and applications. Companies that haven’t been paying attention to mobile technology will be forgotten and become obsolete. Responsive Web design and layered interfaces are sleek, user-friendly, and fairly easy to develop with the right professional help. Mobile marketing should be synonymous with digital marketing at this point; it’s that integral to the success of a campaign.

As the above chart indicates, millennials and others are being successfully influenced to act by mobile campaigns.

9. Forgetting to Measure Results

Coming up with the ideas and putting them into practice are only the beginning of a digital marketing campaign. After the initial launch, marketers need to use relevant metrics that confirm the ROI of a campaign.

The good news is a digital campaign is not static once it has launched. You can continue to use analytics throughout the campaign period to tweak posts, keywords, and other information to better target your audience. Over time, your content will be optimized so that it meets and exceeds the goals you set in the beginning of the process.

10. Using Old-School SEO

Beware any SEO or digital marketing agencies that push keyword stuffing, outbound link building, and other old-school methods. As Google’s algorithms evolve, old SEO practices are getting companies penalized. Focusing on providing valuable content and creating natural inbound and outbound links is the new strategy that SEO companies are adopting.

Organic marketing will help you build a better ranking in search engines, and it’s more likely to appeal to users searching online for information about a company like yours.

11. Failing to Use a Combination of Offline and Online Marketing Strategies

Digital marketing is incredibly important, but it should always be supported by more traditional marketing strategies. People still drive by billboards and react to the information they see there. The difference is that now print advertising includes digital marketing information. Social cues are ever-present in the bottom corner of magazine ads and on subway signs.

You may even notice a print campaign entirely digital in focus. It may feature a hashtagged word or a Twitter handle. Mixing traditional and modern marketing strategies is the best way to build a multilevel campaign that has the potential to not only reach consumers but connect with them on a deeper level.

* * *

Entrepreneurs have the opportunity to start from a fresh slate. Their brand personality and marketing campaigns can start out from any point of interest and transform to reflect both the brand and consumer interest.

By understanding where to focus initial efforts, entrepreneurs and small-business owners can develop digital marketing practices that will fuel their bottom lines for years to come.

The 11 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Digital Marketing

Are you making these six video marketing mistakes?

Video marketing is so prevalent that by 2016, 74% of all internet traffic will be in the form of a video.  

The reason videos are so popular is because it’s far easier to consume content by watching an engaging video rather than trying to read about it.

But what do your video marketing efforts look like? Have you dabbled in a bit of video creation but failed to get any results? 

It’s quite possible that you are making one – if not all – of these video marketing mistakes.

And for more on this topic, book yourself onto Econsultancy’s Video Marketing Strategy Training or download the Online Video Best Practice Guide.

1. Trying to achieve all marketing goals in one video

Nurturing prospects with content at different stages of the funnel is one of the best ways to build customers.

But unfortunately, not every marketer is using video to effectively nurture their audience through each cycle. 

When creating a video, you need to outline your goal first. Are you looking to build brand awareness? Are you looking to drive leads? Or are you looking to increase conversions? 

How to fix it: 

For a video campaign to be effective, you need to be creating separate videos to achieve each individual goal. A typical journey will cover the three stages of awareness, consideration and decision.  

So for example, some of the most effective videos to use at these three stages include: 

1. Awareness stage: educational, how-to videos


2. Consideration: company related videos


3. Decision: testimonials and case studies 

By automating your video marketing, you’re far more likely to take a prospect through to becoming a lifelong customer.  

2. Creating a video that’s too long

One of the biggest reasons that a person would want to watch your video is because they want a quick way to consume your content. A video that goes on for longer than two minutes is a sure-fire way to turn your audience off. 

In fact, Wistia found that for a video of 4-5 minutes, fewer than 60% of viewers will stay to watch, against 75% for a 1-2 minute video. 

The goal of a video is to get your message across in the shortest, most engaging way possible.

How to fix it:

Think of your video as the hook rather than the manual. Tease your audience with some of the best bits about your product or service, and leave them wanting to find out more. 

This video from Sony is the perfect example:

It’s only 38 seconds long, it doesn’t give too much away and it’s perfectly targeted to get Sony’s audience excited for the new release.

When thinking about your video, try and highlight one main selling point, rather than trying to fill it full of every feature you have. 

3. Not focusing on your target audience

Sure, everyone wants to create a video that’s going to be viewed by millions of people. But if you go into video marketing with this mindset, you’re not focusing on what really matters to your business – ROI. 

A video of a dog riding a skateboard may rack up plenty of views, but do those viewers really care about buying your email marketing service for example? Probably not. 

That’s not to say that you can’t create a viral video, but you just need to make sure that it relates to your audience and what you do. 

How to fix it:

Take a look at the infamous Dollar Shave video as the perfect example:

It’s a product video that’s fun, engaging and simple: buy quality razors for just $1. 

4. Forgetting to include the call to action  

Using a call-to-action in your video is really important as your viewers need to know where to go next.

The call-to-action you use will vary depending on the goal of your video, as talked about in point one. 

How to fix it:

If your goal is to drive more leads, then point them to a lead-conversion piece like an ebook. If you goal is to convert, then tell them where they can buy your product or how to contact you. 

So for example, we’ve created a series of educational videos for our clients to understand more about what we do. To help us build a stronger lead list, we’ve included a call-to-action that asks the viewer for their email address to carry on watching the content:  

5. Not optimizing the landing page

Once you’ve created your video, there’s still a lot of work to be done to make sure that people see it.

Unfortunately, Google still doesn’t have the ability to read video content, so if you want your audience to find it then you’re going to have to optimize the landing page. 

How to fix it: 

First you need to add the keywords of your video to your landing page. So let’s say you’re targeting ’email marketing’, you need to add these keywords to your title header, in the URL, meta description and within the first sentence of your intro. 

Next, include the transcript of the video on the landing page, so that Google can understand the video content. 

Finally, don’t forget to include social sharing buttons and an embed code so that people can share the video for you and further increase the chance of more people seeing it. 

6. Not having an effective promotion strategy

Promoting your video is arguably the most important step, yet many marketers seem to think their work is done once they’ve created a good piece of content. 

Unfortunately, your audience won’t just stumble on your video, you need to put it in front of them, so therefore a good outreach strategy needs to be in place so you can achieve the goals that you want to with your video. 

How to fix it:

Put together an action plan to promote and outreach the video. This should look a little bit like these tips below:  

• Blog about your video.


• Upload it to all of your social channels.


• Outreach to influencers and ask them if they would share it.


• Write guest posts surrounding the content of your video and link back to it.


• Email your database.


• Pay to advertise across all channels.

The more effort you put into promoting and outreaching, the better chance you will have of achieving your goals!

To learn more about content distribution strategies, check out Econsultancy’s guide on How To Go Viral.

Are you making these six video marketing mistakes?

10 common SME marketing mistakes and how to avoid them

Many Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) rush headlong to market their products without really understanding the process or carrying out effective market research. Here are ten of the most common marketing mistakes that SMEs can avoid and see a greater Return on Investment (ROI).

1. First impressions really do matter

Given the popularity of online marketing techniques, it’s all too easy to overlook the importance of a personal introduction accompanied by a professional and well-designed business card. Business cards from Helloprint will promote your brand and make it easy for potential customers to contact you. Most business cards are competitively priced and will complement your online presence.

2. Look at your competitors

Whether you set up your SME because you have a unique product or you think that your brand is better than your competitor’s, always keep an eye on your opposition. If you track their failures as well as their successes you’ll be able to carve out a niche for your SME within the marketplace.

3. Shout about your differences

If you think that your company has a wonderful and unique product, then tell the world.! The same rules apply to exceptional customer service and product delivery. The public won’t necessarily be aware of your businesses’ skills unless you tell them about it.

4. Effective social media marketing

It’s not simply enough to have a social media presence. If you want to make effective use of these marketing tools, go on a course and learn more about the power of Twitter, Facebook and others forms of social engagement. A poorly-used company social media account can be worse than no account at all.

5. Keep your company website fresh

Always make sure that your information on your website is up to date. Try not to use stock images, they’re boring and the public may recognise these from other brands.

6. Devise a marketing plan

If you’re the director of an SME, you must devise a cohesive marketing plan and stick to it. Price the plan and organise marketing targets. The plan needn’t take a long time to create but it may well stop you going off at an expensive tangent in the future.

7. Be consistent

The branding website Bytestart suggests that SMEs that change their marketing message run the risk of confusing their customers. Once you have worked out your brand message then it’s important to stick to this.

8. Manage your expectations

If you’re outsourcing your marketing, be realistic. Carry out agency research and don’t expect results to flood in within the first month. Establishing your brand and then asking an agency to establish Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns or any other type of analytical course of action will take time.

9. Keep up with your customer base

Always listen to your customers. They’re the people who keep you in business. Establish focus groups before the launch of a new product and take their suggestions on board.

10. Don’t bombard the public

The public are a lot brighter than some companies think. If you’re using an email marketing campaign, the online business blog 123-reg Ltd suggests that you always personalise these emails and try to limit the amount of unscheduled emails your SME despatches.

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10 common SME marketing mistakes and how to avoid them

Avoid These 5 Mistakes When Hiring an SEO Consultant

If your company is considering hiring an SEO consultant, either to assist your in-house SEO team or completely take over the entire search engine optimization effort, there are several mistakes you need to avoid.

Hiring the wrong consultant to take the helm of your search marketing effort can result in a huge mess that is not only difficult to clean up, but expensive as well. A simple Google search will bring up a bunch of consultant options, ranging greatly in skill level, experience and price. Here are five mistakes you need to avoid when hiring an SEO consultant for your company.

1. Hiring a consultant based on keyword ranking promises.

Many SEOs will try to sell you on keyword rankings. They will send you a fancy report every month that shows the position of the keywords, but how important are those rankings if they aren’t resulting in leads, sales and revenue for your business?

Image if you were ranking for two keywords, and one was ranking in the top position and the other was ranking at the bottom of page one. The keyword ranking number one only has 320 monthly searches and it was responsible for converting $1,000 in revenue the past month. The other keyword that’s at the bottom of page one has a monthly search volume of 12,200 and it was responsible for driving $7,000 in revenue the past month.

Would you rather a ranking report that highlights a number one ranking or do you want to know how much revenue your SEO campaign is generating and what your ROI is every month? Keyword rankings don’t matter. Revenue and ROI do. It’s important to work with an SEO consultant that understands what numbers truly matter.

2. Going into the relationship with unrealistic expectations.

SEO takes time. Anyone that is telling you he or she will have your website ranking in a matter of days is telling you what you want to hear in order to get you to sign the contract. An experienced SEO consultant will be able to give you an educated guess as to how soon you should expect to see increased traffic. This varies depending on your industry, competition, goals and strategy.

There are SEO services that promise results in a matter of days and some even guarantee number one rankings. Stay far away from these as they will greatly disappoint you, waste your time and money, as well as put your website in danger.

3. Hiring an SEO consultant based on lowest price.

While a $499/month SEO service might sound good to your accounting department, it’s going to end up costing you much more money in the long-run. When you really dive into what SEO entails you will understand that search engine optimization for a few hundred dollars a month is a pipe dream.

An experienced SEO consultant can charge thousands of dollars a month, depending on the campaign goals and competition. If you can’t afford an experience consultant it would be better to move slowly and attempt to do some of the ground work yourself, rather to hire a cheaper option. Low quality SEO can do severe damage to your website, requiring an extensive clean up effort, costing you more money in the long run than hiring the right SEO consultant from the start would have.

4. Hire an SEO consultant that sells pre-made packages.

There is absolutely no reason why you should be purchasing an SEO package. An effective SEO campaign is 100 percent custom and designed specifically for your website, your competition, your keywords and your campaign objectives. When you begin to search for a consultant you will often find that many will offer different package options, and these cookie-cutter packages are sold to every business.

Do you really think the same SEO strategy that is being applied to a hair salon in Boca Raton is going to be what a car dealership in Miami is going to need? Pre-packaged SEO is dangerous as well as ineffective.

5. Rely only on organic search traffic.

The worst thing you could do is put all of your eggs into one basket and have your company relying 100 percent on organic search traffic. Your traffic numbers could vanish overnight, for a number of reasons. A competitor could outrank you or Google could roll out an algorithm update that impacts your website. No SEO consultant, no matter how good he or she is, can predict what the search engines will do next.

It’s important to diversify your online marketing to include several forms of traffic, including paid search, social media, content marketing and display advertising, just to name a few. When you have several streams of traffic you can make an adjustment to increase the traffic from another outlet if a particular traffic source dries up.

Jonathan Long is the Founder & CEO of Market Domination Media®, an online marketing agency that provides Twitter.

Avoid These 5 Mistakes When Hiring an SEO Consultant

Five Big Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make

Earning a reward in the form of a commission, by selling someone else’s products can be appealing to budding marketers looking to make money online. However, a lot of mistakes can be made when trying to establish your own successful monetised site. Below highlights some of the biggest mistakes prospective affiliates make when entering the affiliate marketing space.

Lack of research

A fundamental error is not understanding what affiliate marketing actually is, and consequentially, the ways in which it could best work for you. Too often people enquire on how to join affiliate networks as a publisher before having a website in place, which is essential to getting started in the channel. 

Another common instance would be building a basic website which lacks strong relevant content, adding a few links and then wonder ‘why isn’t my site making any money?’

Once the value of the affiliate marketing business model is understood and the focus and purpose of your website is defined, then you can switch you attention to researching the actual products and services you wish to promote. 

Pushing the sale

Placing too much emphasis on directing readers to a ‘Click to Action’ button to try to push a sale will inevitably have the diverse effect of pushing your site traffic away. You can see how this is an easy mistake to make, as ultimately you make money by driving people to an advertiser’s site to then purchase a product which you receive commission on. So placing ‘Buy Now’ buttons on your site seems like an appropriate call, right? 

However, the key is driving relevant traffic, as the more relevant the traffic, the more likely people are to convert and generate you a commission. Therefore ideally you should aim to focus on credibility by becoming an authority in your industry and provide knowledge on the products or services you are promoting. Avoid just placing an affiliate link on your site, instead write some content around the product. Maybe you have tried and tested the product and this will help establish a connection with the reader. People are far less likely to purchase a product if they feel they are being pushed to purchase. Instead, focus on educating your audience on the product you’re promoting.

Once this has been accomplished, you will have become a valued source of information to those who use your site and a key component in their buying decision process. Only then are you likely to see sustained conversions being driven through your site.

Promoting irrelevant programs

Promoting as many affiliate programmes as possible in an effort to maximise your revenue streams may sound appealing to new affiliate marketers just starting out. However there will come a point where your site will lose its focus, particularly if you are trying to adhere to all of these programmes. As a result, content quality will suffer, alienating your hard-earned traffic which will eventually drive them away.

Instead, focus on a small group of relevant programmes your site will complement, as this will be far more manageable for you and far more rewarding for those who visit your site. Maintaining the purpose of your website and the confidence of your users you have established is key to running a successful affiliate site.

Radio silence

Another fallout from joining either irrelevant or multiple programmes is that you give yourself too much to do and can become too thinly spread to make the most of these relationships. This leads to many new affiliate marketers failing to speak to the advertisers who are likely to make the biggest difference to how effective your site can be. Building a relationship with all your key players, whether this is the advertiser directly, or with either an agency or network, will play a vital role in your success as an affiliate.

By establishing these relationships, you are able to let them know about the opportunities available on your site and the demographics of your audience. This helps the advertiser position you in their wider affiliate strategy, particularly if you are able to prove the success of promotions they have run with you with case studies. These could lead to either more promotions from the advertiser or a direct competitor. The more you know about the products you are promoting and the more the advertiser knows about your opportunities, the more effective you will be as an affiliate.

Inactivity

Arguably one of the biggest mistakes new affiliate marketers make is inactivity. Too often new sites are set up with content and links to advertisers and then the site owner gets comfortable, sits back and expects the money to just roll in. This is not how affiliate marketing works, you need to work at it.

You need to remain active with the work you put into your site, it’s easy to fall into the trap of regularly updating your content every week and sending out a blog post every day, to sporadically updating your site every few months.  To keep your users engaged you need to keep providing them with fresh content that encourages them to keep coming back to the site, to see what the latest news and offers are on the products they are interested in.

Conclusion

Making sure you’ve done your research on both affiliate marketing and the products you will be promoting, whilst maintaining the focus of your site and the trust of your audience is pivotal to running a successful affiliate site. In most cases, affiliate sites fail when these objectives are either unaccomplished or become neglected. 

These are just some of the mistakes I’ve seen new affiliates make but by avoiding these you can then establish a strong foundation to become a successful affiliate. This will take time, as you will have to work hard to keep your sites content relevant to constantly moving trends and work smart to maintain your relationships. 

Five Big Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make

8 Social Media Mistakes That Are Killing Your Brand

Social media has great potential for businesses looking to increase their reach, traffic and leads. But when it’s not used properly, it can actually damage your brand’s reputation.

This article will walk you through eight social media marketing mistakes you should avoid at all costs.

1. Not properly vetting and supervising your social media managers

Your social media managers are the face of your company online. With social media now driving almost a third of all referral traffic, it’s absolutely critical that those responsible for driving these referrals are up to the task.

While mistakes can’t always be avoided, we’ve seen too many examples of inexperienced, untrained or poorly supervised employees getting free reign of the company’s social media accounts.

Related: How to Leverage Google+ and Pinterest Search

Take the American Apparel debacle, for example. In celebration of the Fourth of July, the company posted a photo of the Challenger space shuttle exploding in midair. Apparently the social media manager was born after the 1986 disaster and mistook the explosion for clouds or fireworks. This could easily have been avoided had there even been one extra level of redundancy in place.

2. Not responding appropriately to negative feedback

Negative feedback is going to happen. You can choose to ignore it, fight back or take it in stride. How you respond says a lot about your brand.

Some brands operate under the assumption that they can simply delete negative comments without repercussions. Others believe that ignoring negative or inflammatory comments is the way to go.

Rather than avoiding, why not use these situations as opportunities to shine? Respond thoughtfully and promptly to negative comments, and use them as opportunities to showcase your commitment to customer service.

3. Buying likes or followers

Buying fans or followers is risky business. Some brands still believe that padding their numbers by paying for fictitious fans is a harmless endeavor. But did you know that buying Facebook fans can actually hurt your brand by decreasing your overall reach?

Fake fans will never interact or engage with your page, signaling to Facebook that your content isn’t interesting or valuable to your audience. This leads to an overall algorithmic decrease in your post reach and visibility. You could also find your account being closed, banned or deleted should Facebook find out about your schemes.

It’s far better to focus on attracting real, interested fans who will engage with your posts.

4. Being a one-trick pony

Posting the same types of content again and again can convey the impression that your brand is boring, uncreative or just not in tune with your audience. Instead of posting link after link or quote after quote, change things up by posting a wide variety of content.

When you get hung up on posting the same types of content again and again, your followers will become less engaged and are more apt to think you simply don’t care about posting engaging content.

5. Promoting your products … constantly

There’s a time and place for promoting your business or products, even on social media. However, too many brands are still using social media as a channel for pushing their marketing message.

Social selling is all about building relationships and trust that will ultimately lead to sales. Don’t abuse the platform by using it as billboard or commercial. The 80/20 principle is a good rule of thumb: post engaging, high-value content 80 percent of the time and promote your products no more than 20 percent of the time. Better yet, think about how you can move your social media fans and followers into your online marketing funnel — then you never have to directly promote on social media.

Related: 10 Ways to Grow a Huge Following on Twitter

6. Being inconsistent in use and messaging

Do you have a schedule for when and how often you post? Do you have a consistent voice that you use across all your social media profiles? Do your profile and cover photos convey what are you brand is about? How do you respond to negative feedback or criticism?

The best way to be consistent in your social media marketing is to have a strategy in place. This will include, among other elements, guidance about how and when you’ll use social media:

• Guidelines for how to respond to negative comments


• A frequently asked questions document that various team members can refer to. This will help ensure consistency in messaging.


• A repository of brand-related images staff can use for profile photos, cover photos, etc.


• A posting schedule for each social media channel

7. Offering canned responses

Having a social media plan in place will help you to respond to questions and comments in a consistent manner. But the “cut and paste” method of responding to comments — particularly to criticisms — can lead to some pretty significant backlash.

In 2013, Kmart was heavily criticized for using this strategy to respond to criticisms about their holiday hours and staffing policies. Using a handful of generic responses didn’t go over well.

While having prepared responses in place for commonly asked questions can certainly save you some time, use them with caution. Keep in mind that criticisms, negative feedback and specific questions should generally be met with thoughtful, personalized responses.

8. Spreading yourself too thin

Just because a social networking site exists doesn’t mean you have to use it. Spreading yourself thin by committing to too many networks can mean you’re not using any of them effectively.

Instead of spreading your valuable time and resources between eight sites, consider choosing the top five, three or even two sites that are the best match for your target market. It’s better to fully commit to a regular posting schedule on a few networks than letting many lie dormant.

Final thoughts

Avoiding these mistakes all comes down to ensuring your team is properly trained, using your resources wisely and responding to your fans and followers in a professional manner. When it comes down to it, treating your social media followers the same way you’d treat in-store customers or clients will help you avoid the worst of these mistakes.

For direction on how to correctly run a social media campaign, check out my ebook, The Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing.

Related: 5 Social-Media Hacks to Boost Your Brand Starting Right Now

8 Social Media Mistakes That Are Killing Your Brand

Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Stephen is the CEO of The Rainmaker Institute, the nation’s largest law firm marketing company specializing in lead conversion for small to medium size law firms. Over 10,000 attorneys have benefited from learning and implementing the proven marketing and lead conversion strategies taught by The Rainmaker Institute. He works exclusively with attorneys to find new clients fast using online and offline legal marketing strategies and to convert more prospects into paying clients using automated marketing and by fixing their follow up systems.

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Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid