Avoid basic social media & website mistakes part 1

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It’s everywhere. On every website, every piece of marketing material, TV, and branded vehicles. And what a great way to further promote your business and service by putting content and all your messages in a place where people spend more of their (virtual) life. Most people would freely admit they spend far too long on Facebook or Twitter. But as a marketeer or business owner, what better way than to get a local, timely and relevant promotion out there and in front of people’s faces (or rather, in their timeline)?

Like it or not, social media marketing is proven and firmly here to stay. However, getting the best from it is hard. Very hard. Doing it badly and in a lazy way is easy and all-too common. Doing it well will yield results.

We see businesses, some high street brands, others smaller local businesses all grasp the social media marketing nettle every day but we also see them make the same basic and fundamental mistakes.

In this article we will highlight the all-too common mistakes businesses make when embarking on their social media marketing campaign and provide some useful tips to avoid falling foul of these errors and to actually start to benefit from this amazing opportunity the platforms provide.

We’ve compiled a list of the top 10 social media and website faux pas we see most often. There are five examples in this article, and the last five in part two next week.

Some will seem patently obvious, some not-so. However, they all have merit and should be remembered. So, here goes with out top 10 of social media and website owner mistakes. We’re going to run in reverse order – the most prevalent being the one that gave us reason to write this article.

10.  Linking to your website from a Facebook or Twitter page but your website is not mobile friendly. 90%+ of people use social media platforms on their phone – #fail. Call your web designer (or better still, us) and have it converted to a mobile responsive site. It’s most of your audience so stop putting it off. For a standard small business website prices start from as little as £300.

9. Page admins liking or sharing irrelevant or inappropriate content. An easy mistake to make when logged-in as the company and not the individual. It sets a bad tone and image of that company and deviates from the core brand. Just because you think it’s funny or relevant doesn’t mean that it’s right for your company to project the same image. Social posts associate the poster with the content.

8. Not having a proper URL on social channel sites that relate to your business. You’ve set up the page for your business – great. Have you done all the set up properly though? We see all-too often businesses not set or claim their social channel URL properly. That means having the address like: www.facebook.com/yourcompanyname.

The most common error is where the company page has a string of 38 numbers and letters and all sorts of stuff  in the URL address that even mega-brain Stephen Hawking couldn’t remember when trying to search for it. Go into the settings, look for the page control/info and make sure a shorter address is set – you can then use this to promote. If you’re unsure, call us and we’ll talk you through it free of charge.

7. Never slate another company, brand or moan about something that you or your company can do nothing about Complaining about Brexit, the current tax position of the Government or a local authority also sets the tone of the company and may prevent another company getting in touch if they do not share your political views.

6. REALLY long posts. Nobody wants to read it. Keep it short, sweet and poignant. Which leads nicely in to…

Visit back next week or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to find out when part two of the article becomes published.

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