The 15 Most Detrimental Social Media Mistakes You’re Making
Marvin Powell, a Small Business Growth Consultant in Washington DC, posted a question on LinkedIn's Q&A section:
“What are the biggest mistakes that you find small business leaders make when using social media?”
More than 70 experts and professionals responded with their two cents. We scoured through the comments to find common themes and pulled out the best answers.
“Too much time spent on self-promotion”
“One big mistake small business leaders make in social media is to spend a lot of time trying to promote themselves. They also forget to keep an eye on their brand. [Social media changes quickly] and small businesses need to watch their brands [all the time].
“We found during research for a client that there were a number of upset customers posting on forums and social networks. None of these [complaints] had been looked into. Something like that can be actioned very quickly and you can quickly change a negative view into a positive one. Just think, “It can take 20 years to build a business and watch it be destroyed in 20 minutes!”
– Paul Collin, Business Relationship Manager at Holiday Inn Express Croydon
Source: LinkedIn Q&A
“Having unrealistic expectations”
“Expecting social media to be the only way to get results and trying to do everything themselves. This goes for other tools as well.
“In addition, having unrealistic expectations of what it can do.”
– Yok SooHoo, Business Development at JRS Recovery
Source: LinkedIn Q&A
“Not making it relevant to me”
“I don’t want to get ten tweets a day hearing about YOU. I want to hear things that are valuable for me and my life … and they need to be fast.
“And not too frequent: I don’t want to incessantly hear about your business. It won’t make me think of you more, it’ll just make me annoyed with you.
“So: short, sweet, pertinent, and valuable to me.”
Source: LinkedIn Q&A
– Laura Kowalski, Business Consultant for Business Owners and Senior Executives