1. business and industrial

KNEWSTART REPORT
7 Dumb Mistakes That Smart
Business Owners Make With
Social Media
7 Dumb Mistakes That Smart Business
Owners Make With Social Media
Whether you like it or not, social media is here to stay, and it’s rapidly evolving into an essential tool
for business. No longer do you have a choice as to whether or not to participate. Choose not to, as
a business owner and your business will suffer. Choose not to, as an individual and you’ll be
replaced. It’s really that simple.
Social media is happening with or without you, and year-on-year, more business owners
understand the value it brings when implemented the right way. Treated as a business asset, they
experience exponential social capital and a return on their investment.
However.
Whilst this is encouraging, unfortunately there are still many who are not achieving success. This
report has therefore been written to go through why they’re not, and to help address this issue. The
report covers seven common (dumb) mistakes that business owners make with social media.
#1 Mistake – Ignoring social media AND thinking it’s not relevant
I’ll be blunt. When you ignore social media in business it’s like saying “we don’t need clients to grow
our revenues.” Personally I don’t know any business that could survive, let alone grow without its
client base.
Social media positions you. It raises your profile. It helps you get found. It gets you exposure. It
helps you attract new clients and keep in touch with existing ones. It enables you to get to know
them much better and develop relationships. It makes you more responsive to their needs. It can
even help with business continuity and keep you operational when (not if) you get hacked. Social
media is an extremely powerful business tool.
Accept it.
#2 Mistake – Failing to set objectives
I see this mistake time and time again. However, it can be so easily solved.
A business sees their nearest rival using a particular social media platform. For this example, let’s
pretend its Facebook. They think they’re missing out. They so jump on the bandwagon and get a
Facebook account.
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It’s a fail. Here’s why.
As with everything you do, it’s important to consider your objectives right from the start. Just
because someone else does it doesn’t mean you should too. You’re more than that. Besides, you
know that time is your most valuable asset. It’s not just a cliché. It’s a fact. You can’t get it back so
you must ensure that you’re spending your time productively. When it comes to social media, the
first thing you need to do is to ascertain what you actually want to achieve by using it. You then you
need to define this in an order of priority, and do some research.
I’ll give you some examples.
Business A uses social media for lead development but principally for SEO i.e. to help them get
found more easily in the search engines. They’re not looking for anything else other than
optimization. They want to dominate the first page of Google for their search terms. They check
where their target market goes online and are able to determine that some social media platforms
are used more than others. They create a list of these platforms and rank them in order of
importance, according to the information they’ve gathered on their prospects. They put more time
and effort into the platforms that are more frequented by their target market.
Business B uses social media for lead development too. In some ways they’re more advanced that
Business A so their main objective is to support their sales team. To them it’s a tool that’s
supplements their cold calling. It hasn’t replaced the phone and nor will it, but it’s helps them data
mine; find buyers that are looking for their services and develop relationships faster. And, it
positions them as the best provider to fulfill their target buyers’ needs.
In parallel, their marketing teams are working on campaigns. They’re generating interest in the
brand, listening for buying signals and engaging. They’re making their content relevant to their
target buyers and researching more thoroughly for what’s genuinely needed. Their eye is on the
competition too so they understand their strengths and weaknesses better. They’re feeding this
back to the sales team and joining the intelligence up. Their pitches are stronger, their collateral is
more relevant and they’re winning more business.
Business C uses social media primarily as a vehicle for communication. They’re focusing on
customer service, reputation management and business continuity. They know that their target
buyers are active on social media and that they have a competitive advantage if they can be more
responsive to them there. They’re on the platforms 24x7, listening out for customer queries,
complaints and praise, and promptly answering, rectifying or celebrating them. They join in the
discussion. They add value.
They know that if they want to get a message out to their customer base in real time they can do so
through their social media platforms. This helps if there’s a crisis and a message that needs to be
communicated. It also helps if their website goes down. It’s a reality.
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Business D uses social media to attract new talent. They’re a growing business and want to lower
their recruitment costs. They don’t post job positions all the time, but they’re positioning their
organization and the opportunities of working for their brand.
They’re focusing on their leadership. They’re promoting the values and culture of their organisation.
They’re following the game changer’s, like Richard Branson (@RichardBranson), Donald Trump
(@realDonaldTrump), Marc Cuban (@mcuban), Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff), Tony Hsieh
(@Zappos_Hsieh) and Bill Gates (@BillGates).
They’re sharing inspiring leadership stories and quotations, which creates online conversations
about fresh business ventures. They’re mixing things up so it’s not all about the business, and
they’re raising awareness for charitable initiatives or other things they simply find fun or interesting.
By tweeting and blogging daily, their employees follow suit and engage directly with their target
buyers through social media. They’re able to find out what their target buyers want and need. As a
result, they remain ahead of their competition.
Business E concentrates on staffing retention and innovation. They’re using social media as a way
to keep in contact with their team. They’re globally dispersed but through private social media
platforms they’re able to communicate more readily and be more responsive. They can
demonstrate that they’re a social business; community lead and care about staff welfare. They’re
interested in their employees and what they’re thinking. Whilst they’re not physically on the ‘shop
floor’ with them, virtually they’re as good as. And, this helps not only to retain talent but with
innovation.
#3 Mistake – Operating “push” marketing techniques
I’m not a fan of jargon so let’s start by defining what push marketing is. Push marketing is a
marketing term that involves getting your products or services in front of your target market. It’s
sometimes referred to as traditional marketing or outbound marketing. It’s typically one-way and
involves any of the following; advertising, direct mail, cold calling, billboards, trade shows,
conferences and events.
Its nemesis is pull marketing, which is sometimes referred to as modern marketing, attraction
marketing or inbound marketing. This type of marketing “pulls” the target buyer into the business.
Understanding that today’s buyer is an avid researcher and seeks out a solution to their problems
online, pull marketing gives you an opportunity to attract the buyers who want answers you already
provide. To see it in action, just imagine yourself browsing online. You see an advert for a product
you love and then click through to buy it, or learn more.
So how does it fit in with social media?
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Well, to date much of the conversation around social media has been on marketing and ways to
support the brand i.e. to get the target buyer to see you and listen to you. As a consequence,
businesses have used marketing to create content for blogs and social media platforms.
They’ve used push marketing tactics and literally pushed out tweets and posts. However, rarely
have they had conversations after doing so. When their target buyers have engaged with them,
their voices have fallen on deaf ears. No one has been listening, for that’s not how push marketing
has ever been done.
Feeling ignored, rejected and upset with the brand, the target buyer has moved on to the
competition. They understand social media and they get them. Ultimately they take the business.
So when it comes to your social media activity, make sure you use push marketing strategies. Work
on maintaining a good balance between informative and personal posts. It’s great to publish lots of
valuable information to your target buyers such as industry-related news but it’s also important to let
the personality and culture of your company shine through. Otherwise it gets boring. Social media is
“social” so remember to entertain your buyers as well as to engage them. Make them feel good
about interacting with you. They’ll then come back for more.
#4 Mistake – Choosing DIY rather than learning from experts
How hard can social media be? You’ve got a Facebook account and are happy posting and
uploading photos. It makes sense for you to think that you can cope with your own brand’s social
media activity, or a Gen Y, or someone from within marketing can.
Unfortunately this approach is shortsighted. Social media for business requires a strategic
approach. It requires tried and tested tactics and a different set of skills than most have acquired
without training. It’s more than tweeting or posting about what you’ve just accomplished.
With technology advancing at a rapid pace, keeping up-to-date with the latest social media
practices is crucial for any business owner who’s using it to drive their business forward. Socially
savvy buyers want the latest news, insights and promotions. They’re engaging by asking questions
and commenting. They don’t sleep either. They’re doing this on a 24x7 basis, 365 days of the year.
And, they want answers and interaction in real-time.
Not everyone knows how to cope with this so investing in social media training can help them to
understand how best to filter the content, deal with engagement and set expectations. It can help
them to understand how to position themselves, express their voices and convey their messages. It
can inform them on best practice too in terms of policies and procedures that are in line with the
business.
Social media training saves time. And, it cannot be well executed, to deliver a return on investment
without training.
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#5 Mistake – Failing to create, manage and measure a social media
implementation plan
Finally you’ve accepted that you need social media training across the company. You’ve found a
supplier and the social media training gets delivered. You expect to see transformational results
and a healthy bottom line.
It doesn’t happen.
Don’t beat yourself up about this though. Many businesses fail at this hurdle. They do a great job of
recognizing that they can’t do it alone but then fail to understand that someone needs to own it
within their organization, create an implementation plan, see it through to completion and track the
results.
They often start at the wrong point. A better place to begin is with a gap analysis or audit. Ideally
you need to be assessed by an independent party to ascertain where you are, where you want to
be and what’s going to get you there. If you don’t do it this way, you’re going to miss valuable
information and run the risk of not joining things up within the organization.
You need to capitalize on the technology.
When you opt for an audit, and assign a key stakeholder to it your chances of success double. They
can work with the independent auditor to create a social media plan for key departments or for the
organization as a whole. It really depends on your requirements.
They can then check to see that everything has been understood, is being acted upon and
measure, assess and report back on the whole initiative. By reviewing the process in this way, you
can then make improvements and provide a more targeted approach for the future.
#6 Mistake – Working as individuals or SILOS rather than as teams
I’m going to use sales and marketing to illustrate this fail. Since the advent of my business career,
I’ve seen these two at loggerheads. No matter which company I walk into, it’s the same story. Sales
believe that marketing aren’t providing enough quality leads and marketing believe that sales aren’t
converting enough of the leads they do provide. And that’s even when they’re tracking this apparently.
Obviously this has to stop.
And social media can help. It can act as a bridge. It can wave the white flag. By educating both
teams and others within your company on why they need to work together as a united front they’ll
achieve greater job satisfaction, security and incomes.
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Only by getting your teams to work together and focus their attention firmly on your target buyers
will a business increase its leads, sales and revenues. By leveraging off all employees a business
will grow its exposure and influence. As a business owner you must realize that these relationships
are a vital component of your business success and go about reinforcing the alliances.
#7 Mistake – Working without a social media policy
When it comes to social media and the law I get asked a lot of questions. Typically these can be
summarized as:
•
Who owns the social media profile?
•
Does a social media account belong to the employee or the brand?
•
What happens when the employee who posts or tweets on behalf of the brand (using their
own name and own social media account) resigns, quits or has their job terminated?
•
What happens to the data, the contacts and networks?
•
Who owns these now?
These are great questions and as with all things legal, it’s crucial you seek specialist advice. The
law is extremely complex and social media is still very new.
As a business owner the cleanest, clearest and least costly approach is to have a social media
policy and written agreement for your employees that details who owns what i.e. the profiles,
logins/access, content, followers; how it can be used and so on. Both the brand and the employees
need to make sure that the terms are clearly defined so there’s no question or confusion as to what
happens when the inevitable happens – they leave.
Conclusion
Whilst there are challenges for business owners to overcome when using social media, make no
mistake; there are more advantages available. And, whether you chose to get involved or not, one
thing is certain – your clients, prospects and competitors will. You can treat it as an asset now;
integrate it into your company by training your teams and see the returns unfold, or get you can get
left behind.
Thank you, as always for reading. If you found this useful, please tell others and get them to sign up
to receive more information.
Wishing you much success!
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About the Author
Jane Frankland is a successful technology entrepreneur,
business consultant and speaker. She has built and sold her own
seven-figure business and is frequently invited to speak about
entrepreneurship, women in business, cyber security and social
media at events around the world. She has over 18 years worth of
experience in business development and has held directorships
and senior executive positions within her own companies and at
several large PLCs. She built her last business in her mid
twenties, and through her latest consultancy, KnewStart, provides
strategic business development solutions to existing or aspiring
entrepreneurs.
Jane believes passionately in entrepreneurship, empowerment and freedom. Through her work she
wants to see more businesses survive and thrive. She is particularly interested in modern business
development methods and is currently writing a book, Who The Google Are You, on how to harness
the power of the Internet for accelerated business growth.
Jane has a BA (Hons) from Loughborough University in Design, is a Nominated Young British
Designer and a Fellow of the Institute of Sales & Marketing (ISMM). She’s also a mother to three
children, has a Weimaraner dog and a black and white moggy. The question you’ll hear her ask the
most in business is ‘what’s your objective?’ The reason why is obvious. Time is precious and unless
you know why you’re doing something why do it at all. However, at home it’s always, “Shall we go?”
Jane can be contacted on:
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaneFrankland
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/JaneFrankland
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