The Biggest Mistake to Avoid With Social Media

Top Ten Lists

There is no shortage of top ten lists of biggest mistakes you can make on social or digital media going around and certainly the list of often seen faux pas. Amongst  these are many of the usual suspects we see so often including:

• Providing content that is irrelevant to your target market
• Using social media channels purely to sell their product
• Not taking accountability for any mistakes they make
• Inconsistent scheduling of content
• Not listening to and responding to the market in an appropriate and timely manner, etc.

However one of the most important if not the most important is rarely if ever mentioned.

Social Media Buttons

 Without doubt one of the worst mistakes you can make in your social media marketing network involves the use of social media marketing buttons which typically you will find on many websites in the top right hand corner of the site. Importantly these are the buttons that take you to that platform and should not be confused with Share, Follow or Like Buttons which are very important and useful to drive engagement on our websites and social media sites.

Now to fully understand the folly of this move we need to talk about the strategy of what social media is trying to do.

Drive Traffic To A Central Hub

Regardless of what social media platform we are talking about, the key function they all perform that is common to all is to engage the audience as a precursor to driving traffic from that social media outpost to your digital hub which for most businesses will be your website or in some cases a corporate blog where you will try to commercialise the interest generated through the earlier interactions.

Now if you agree with this you will understand the error of placing these buttons in so prominent a place that people will instantly see them and potentially click on these buttons and be taken away from the site to a less important social media outpost.

Recently while doing a coaching session with a client through the Digital Enterprise Program (DEP) I came across this exact situation and immediately telephoned the web designer to ask why he had done this. His response was simply: " that's what everybody else does."

Below The Fold 

Certainly you can make a strong case for not having these buttons at all on your website, but if you believe that for strategic reasons the value outweighs the risks, then at very least place it at the bottom of the page which for most websites will be well below the fold, which is everything that can be seen on the screen without the use of scroll bars. In this way the website visitor will at least get a chance to see and respond to the main features on the page that should help to achieve you landing page objectives and hopefully minimise your bounce rate to boot.

Further Study

To learn more about all things digital and social media sign up now for a one day course and book at:
http://www.vecci.org.au/business-solutions/training/short-courses/marketing-sales-and-service/social-media-fundamentals

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

Further Study

To learn more about Google's algorithm and all things digital and social media sign up now for a one day course and book at:
http://www.vecci.org.au/business-solutions/training/short-courses/marketing-sales-and-service/social-media-fundamentals

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele. - See more at: http://roadscholarsmarketing.blogspot.com.au/#sthash.3GpsnYsB.dpuf