6 Social Business Mistakes To Avoid

Social Business has rapidly become mainstream. But when a new technology or approach is adopted over a short period of time, you can be sure of one thing. Lots of folks are going to mess it up! It’s not their fault. Just like everyone else, they see the potential and they jump in and learn by doing as fast as they can.

In an effort to help those of you about to jump into the Social Business pool, here are the top six mistakes to avoid drowning:

1. Hire some recent college grads and give the project to them because “they know Social Media,” and think you have solved the problem.

First, just because they are Millennials don’t assume they are Social Media experts. They may be whizzes at SnapChat, Instagram, or Pintrest, but are those platforms where your business wants to be? Also, they likely know little or nothing about your technology, your business, and most importantly the problems your customers are seeking to solve. Finally, are they equipped to create processes, structure, and policies to shape, grow and manage this critical new competitive weapon?

2. Use Social Media simply as a landscape to bombard with marketing glossies.

While marketing glossies have been a staple of the sales and marketing culture for decades, Social Business requires much more, namely engagement. Prospects can find your glossies on your website or the in emails you send. Today Social Business requires more of a real world advice type of approach. This is where you prove that you understand their world and have helped others like them with personal experience stories and maybe a little humour. Then respond to “likes” and comments. Remember, this is a bi-directional medium. Glossies are dry, generic and filled with product features and functionality. Leave them on your website.

3. Simply encourage your employees to “post stuff” or start a “blog” or get socially active and then expect business results.

While employee involvement in a Social Business effort is important, even essential, just cutting everyone loose to do as they will is unwise, bordering on dangerous. With no control or guidance on content, tone, quality, etc. you’re likely to get a yard sale of content of various quality, relevance, or consistency. Your marketing messaging and corporate identity and positioning has been surrendered to folks with little knowledge or understanding of such things. While what results will be rich in “personality” it will likely create a confusing and muddled body of content which will not further your business goals.

4. Look at it as “Marketing’s job.”

While Marketing is often the starting or most likely focal point of Social Business, it’s not solely their responsibility or interest. Other functions like Sales, HR, Product Management, and others can benefit enormously from leveraging Social Business and should be encouraged to do so. Also, Marketing is often at arm’s length from customers’ real world experience, and while they should be helping shape message, content, and tone, they are not equipped to produce some of the most compelling materials your prospects and customers are craving and which will elevate your company’s credibility and status as experts and even thought leaders.

5. Not educating your most valuable contributors on how to use Social Business.

Most companies have experts under their roof who do not work in marketing or sales. They come in many flavors and have a goldmine of valuable information which needs to be shared via Social Business. These folks often work in the trenches. They may be implementation consultants, product management folks, engineers, customer service staff, or sales people. They are filled with years of know how gained on the front lines. They know why customers fail and why they succeed. They know the tips and tricks to get to the finish line faster and with a better result to show for it. They know where the landmines are buried and how to avoid them. Failing to get them writing and sharing what they know is a massive missed opportunity.

6. Not measuring the impact of your efforts.

Even companies that spend time and energy on Social Business often neglect to collect the relevant data to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. The insights provided by this data will guide the topics, channels, content providers and even internal authors you focus on. If you are not getting the results you are seeking, make a change and compare the results. Continual fine tuning using any number of solutions designed to measure and provide insights into your Social Business efforts will yield stronger and stronger results. This is a project which demands continual refinement and evolution.

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