5 Social Media mistakes you’ll want to avoid…

Social media isn’t just a hot trend that will be gone some day down the road, it’s here to stay.

The different platforms people use will change from time to time, but how we share and exchange ideas have forever been changed.

This rise of social media certainly has caught the attention of the small business community. In a nutshell, everyone wants to MONETIZE that avenue for themselves. They tend to see a giant money tree ripe with fruit and they want their share.

This is especially true for service related businesses like the cleaning industry. This has led many small business owners to do just about anything to get online and get their profiles established with the different platforms available.

Nothing really wrong with that, but it’s what they do AFTER that which is so troubling. So today we will talk about some of the easily avoided social media mistakes that far too many people fall prey to.

5 Social Media MISTAKES To AVOID

Social media mistake #1 – Putting social media marketing AHEAD of traditional marketing tactics. I have a lot of people asking me about social media marketing, and that’s good, because its needs to be a PART of the effort you put forth.

What I see however is that many people just focus too much on social media to drive sales. At the end of the day getting out into your community and handing out flyers, creating a direct mail package and joining some networking groups works best.

Make no mistake about it, the traditional methods of getting the word out you own a business needs to come first. Once you have a solid plan for taking care of the BASICS then add in a social media component.

To put this in a time perspective, I would put in 10 hours of traditional marketing for every 1 hour of social media effort. This approach allows for you to FOCUS on what will get you results FIRST yet allows for you to get your feet wet creating an online presence.

Social media mistake #2 – Thinking social media is cheap and easy. The PROBLEM is that many people think social media marketing is the easy road to making money with their cleaning business. This is NOT the case whatsoever, but many people believe it nonetheless.

The learning curve can be steep PLUS the costs involved can be more than most realize. To give you an example of the costs involved, when I first started my online business and tried to get people to “like” my shiny new Cleaning 4 Profit Facebook page it cost me about $1,420.00 to get my first 1,000 likes.

That meant more than one dollar per person who liked my page, it actually was around $1.42. Once I started to figure it all out that “per like” cost came down to well less than a buck, even as low as 16 cents each at times. Needless to say it was an EXPENSIVE LESSON I had to figure out.

Now for me and my Cleaning 4 Profit site that couldn’t be avoided, as I needed a to create a presence there, but for a new cleaning business owner that amount of money would be WASTED. It simply would have been much better spend those dollars SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Social media mistake #3 – Not determining “which social media” platform is most beneficial. Not every single social media outlet is worth your time. As an example, Facebook is quite popular among marketers, BUT it’s very hard to convert people to a sale.

This is because Facebook is much more SOCIAL in nature. This means users aren’t terribly interested in getting pounded with offers for your service. Their goal is to shoot the breeze with friends. If they like your page it’s not because they necessarily want to sign up for service.

What they are doing is “ALLOWING” you the ability to reach them. That DOES NOT MEAN they are interested in one blatant offer after another. It just means they are “open” to listening to what you have to say. That’s a BIG difference, and the sooner you are aware of that the better.

In my opinion LinkedIn is one of the best options for people just getting started in the cleaning business. This is because odds are your TARGET MARKET probably has a profile there. Tons of  facility managers, office managers, business leaders and many other decision makers go there first.

Social media mistake #4 – Not promoting the social media profiles they currently have. Just the act of creating a profile won’t be enough. You NEED TO PROMOTE IT. It is shocking to see how so many people don’t even add a signature line to their email address promoting whatever profile they have.

Not linking profiles to all other communication is extremely common but it really shouldn’t be because it’s just a no-brainer. Get whatever profiles you do have on all of your marketing materials including business cards, newsletters and your website.

Social media mistake #5 – Not “BRANDING” themselves across different channels. Your brand is your online “identity” in a sense, it’s how you are recognized in this new landscape. Think of your social profiles as “mini networks” that make up your overall Internet presence.

These mini networks will all need to be instantly recognizable as being YOURS. The last thing you’ll want to do is confuse folks by having all kinds of varying profile pictures and images across all of your different social media platforms. Why confuse people?

Be consistent and use the same picture of yourself, the same company logo and tagline as well. This will help create a unity of image that will allow you to be instantly recognizable to your contacts as they see you across any channels you are in.

I’ll wrap this up by asking you… What mistakes do YOU see people make and how would you do it differently? Let your thoughts be known in the comments below!

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