In an article written for Forbes magazine, social marketing specialist Stephanie Chandler considers why social marketing doesn’t work in many companies. This can come about for one or more of the following reasons:
1. Unclear goals. Just like with any other marketing activity, clear goals – i.e., what specifically is expected – must be set for social networks. Do you want to increase the traffic on your website or increase awareness of your brand?
2. Unrealistic expectations. Goals must be realistic as well as clearly defined. Facebook is not a magic pill that will suddenly get you masses of new customers within a couple of months. Social marketing forms part of a long-term strategy where the main point is to build awareness of your brand, strengthen relations with existing customers, gain new contacts, support other marketing activities etc.
3. Lack of knowledge of public. Before actively entering a social network, you must have a good knowledge and understanding of your target group – who is in it, what motivates them and what doesn’t, what are their needs? It is only when you know this that you can prepare high-quality content that gives you a chance to attract interest.
4. Inadequate blogging. The most reliable tool for social marketing is the blog. High-quality shared content and original articles will attract people to re-visit your blog and communicate with you. Blogs should ideally be updated two to three times a week and linked to through all of your social networks. You should also ensure that content is clearly related to the brand that you are promoting. If all this has been done, ensure that individual articles have sufficiently attractive titles that give added value to the reader.
5. Social networks entail a commitment. That is, you cannot only administer them when you feel like it; they need to be worked on every day. If, however, you treat it as something you only do for the sake of fulfilling an obligation, readers will sense this. Try to enjoy your work; your enthusiasm will have an effect on your results.
6. Absence of a strategy. If social marketing has no clearly defined direction for its future development, you can have no expectations of it. It is, however, understandable that you will update your strategy based on minor successes and utilise techniques that work.
7. Forget cross-promotion, i.e. mutual marketing support. You must let clients know that, apart from your website, you are now on social networks. Start to include links to your social networks on other media (Internet, description in e-mails, ads etc.) and actively invite clients to visit.
8. Absence of active involvement of the public. If you don’t react to comments left by your readers and don’t clearly show that you take them seriously, they will prefer to join a discussion somewhere else. You should therefore do all you can to engage your public. One very effective method is the sharing of other people’s content (opinion-makers, interest groups), or directly mentioning it.
9. Limited public. You must actively seek and invite fans or followers. Utilise the contacts in your databases and contact them. If you are not proactive, don’t expect people to join you just like that.
10. Social marketing ‘in moderation’. Social marketing is quite time-consuming. If, however, you only devote time to it sporadically, your results will also be sporadic. You can’t achieve good results if you don’t fully devote yourself to something. In smaller businesses you often only need less than an hour a day – but regularly – to achieve success!