As many
online stores now use social media as a way to inform and engage with their customer base, all businesses are now looking to take advantage of this channel as much as they can. However, success through social media sites is not a given, there are a number of mistakes a lot of businesses make.
Having a selling tone when posting content
When placing content on your relevant social media pages, the tone of your content is very important. To actively engage with your audience you need to have a voice that is engaging but also professional. Although you want to engage users to visit your online store and make a purchase, you do not want to have a voice that seems as though you are trying to sell them something. All that is only going to do is put your audience off and have the opposite affect to what you were hoping for.
Not correctly measuring your success
When deciding to embark on a social media campaign, you need to determine a way for you to measure whether your overall strategy is successful. For some this is how many new followers you have managed to accumulate, for others it is how much traffic you have been able to generate from your social media page to your ecommerce store and for some it is how many sales they have generated through
social commerce. You don't want to just use social media without any foresight or plan as you won't be able to accurately measure your success, or lack of it if proves to be the case. Having a way to measure your social media success allows you to see what is the most effective content you are posting and also highlights aspects of your strategy that aren't working and need to be changed.
Making it a one way channel
If you create a social media account expecting to generate a number of followers without actually providing them with anything substantial, you are not going to get very far. Like most aspects of life, social media success is based largely on the idea of give and take. To get people following you and to them have them take an interest in your business and the products you provide, you must provide them with content that interests them. For this you will be rewarded with extra followers, extra engagement and extra traffic to your
ecommerce store.
Only posting status updates
To make sure you not only get followers, but have them actively engaging with your social media page, you need to post content that is going to have people regularly returning to your page. While status updates may be interesting to some people, the truth is others really aren't going to care. For this reason, you need to post a variety of content that ensures that there is something on your page that interests everyone. This means that you should be looking to post blog articles, images, videos, products, offers and promotions in addition to your regular status updates.
One post every now and then
While it is important to vary your content to engage different audiences, it is absolutely imperative that you are placing content and engaging with your followers on a daily basis. Only posting content once a week or even once a month is going to see your engagement figures go way down, which will play no part in helping to improve your brand image and drive traffic to your website.
Keeping quiet
As I highlighted earlier, social media is a two-way street. You post content and then your audience replies or asks questions as they see fit. It is this engagement with your audience that allows you to not only project your public image, but also develop the initial relationship with some of your customers. While some of these comments from customers may be negative, you don't want to hide away, refusing to reply in fear that it may damage your image. You should look to respond to all questions and opinions, either projecting your own point of view or looking to ask further questions in order to develop some form of discussion. If the comments have been negative, don't take offence to them and respond with anger. At all times you must be professional, courteous and engaging in all your posts. Although a response may be aimed at one specific person, you need to remember that everyone else is always watching.
Obsessing over the figures
Just because you lose one follower, doesn't mean it's the end of the world. No matter what social media platform you are using, you will find that your total follower figure fluxuates on a daily basis. Particularly with Twitter, a number of accounts on the site are either bots or dummy accounts, meaning that if they have followed you, they may then leave a few days later. Although you want your social media site to be success and see your follower figures steadily increasing over a certain period of time, losing the odd follower here and there isn't going to make too much difference. At the end of the day you only want people who are interested in your content to be following you. If someone decides that they don't like your content then that isn't someone you want following you anyway.
