What to Avoid to Get Social Media Right
We’ve all seen it – a company trying too hard to be cool on social media. Whether it be a misguided ad or an embarrassing reply to a tweet, it hurts to see a brand’s efforts fall so painfully flat. Social media bears your marketing efforts out to the public – for better or for worse – so how do we avoid trying too hard ? Let’s take a look at some dos and don’ts for your branded social media presence.
Perhaps the most common error performed by brands on social media is trying to be clever.
A lot of social media interaction in recent years has been attributed to “clapping back” at hecklers or naysayers, but the art of the clapback is seldom mastered and incredibly risky. Being anything other than genuine and helpful with your audience poses a massive risk to the trust which you have built with that audience, especially if you target someone who shares a popular opinion. Being snarky, as a brand, can generate positive feedback but can also lead to meme culture taking over your engagement.
One person has even made a Silence Brand Bot which simply responds to specific brand’s tweets with a popular meme which discourages brands from attempting to appear human.
Clever ideas which miss the mark can also be highlighted in advertising campaigns designed for social media. Many major brands employ a strategy of News Hijacking wherein a topic which is already hot on social media is used in your business’s posts in order to garner attention from people who are already invested in said topic. Unfortunately, without proper research, it is easy to hijack a topic or hashtag which should not be made light of and will ultimately lead to a bad taste in your audience’s mouth. Yahoo has collected a brief list of such fails to help you see how not to topic hijack.
While customer engagement is an important measurement for your brand’s successes on social media, it is possible to go too far for engagement.
Typical examples of trying too hard to garner interaction include false advertising and bribery.
Bribery often comes in the form of constant product giveaways wherein you post to social media with the goal of incentivising your audience to respond to your posts by tagging friends in order to “introduce” those friends to your brand. The trade off seems simple – an audience member gives you new target customers and that audience member could win free products or services from you, but buying attention from your consumers does not generate loyalty, and when overutilized as an advertising strategy it becomes cluttered, unappealing, and desperate.
Ultimately your advertising efforts should be genuine.
Once you’ve built a brand through hard work and healthy business practices, continue to act with tact on social media. Beyond knowing yourself, you should know your audience.
Brands that act out of character or against what their consumers may be expecting are likely to have not utilized their data correctly.
Data builds successful advertising.
Need help collecting and incorporating data into your social media efforts? Don’t try too hard. Let the experts at M1-Data help. To find out more about who we are and how we can help you, contact us today.
