The following is a list of the Top Thirteen things that so many Kansas City Business people do with social media that make them look totally clueless. If any of these social media blunders are what you find yourself doing please STOP!
1) Failing Facebook Invites - Inviting all of your Facebook friends to your local kids school pancake breakfast. Yes, we care about your kids but inviting ALL of your Facebook friends doesn't make sense, right? Your friends in Omaha, Wichita, and Springfield will not be coming to town to your kids pancake breakfast in Olathe, Kansas. Truly, send your invites to your local friends. Getting foolish will get your friends to start blocking your invites and then when you have something that is truly important, your Facebook friends will miss it. Make sure you target your invites.
2) Failing Google+ - We all have that one friend who doesn't understand Google+ and shares every post with us everyday, right? The first couple times we chalk it up to a newbie mistake right? We may even send them a message to let them know how to share on Google+. Yes, they understand that if they post to PUBLIC you can still view their post in your stream, but they they keep sharing every post with us like it is late breaking news and we get sick and tired of their post. Sharing post with the same group daily can be considered as SPAM and may get you blocked by your followers. If enough people block you, Google+ will label you as a SPAMMER and spammers will usually lose their accounts on Google+. Sharing a post directly with someone should be reserved for your very best work not a daily event of every post you create!
3) Failing Linkedin - Groups on linkedin are NOT for advertising your business! Seriously why on earth do you think someone in Dallas wants to see your business ad here in Kansas City? THEY DON'T. A professional group where you discuss ways to improve your business is not an open invitation to SPAM your business.
4) Failing at Social Media Conversations - Business people are notorious for going to the social media sharing tools to send their content to various networks and then doing nothing else. Whether they use Hootsuite, Shareaholic, Sesmic, ShareThis or the many other applications, Social media is about being social! Who cares you found a way to post your ads on social media faster, social media is NOT about personal promotion. Stop dumping your advertising content and doing nothing else. Interaction and reciprocation is what makes social media work! If you're not getting engagement on your post, either you have the wrong followers or you're posting poor content. You will not get engagement on every post, but you should have some post with numerous comments, every week.
5) Failing SEO - Quit dropping your Kansas City website address all over the internet every time you make a comment like there is some kind of SEO benefit. This does very little for you! It is just another form of SPAM. In addition, write for the reader, not for the search engines. You want the reader to keep coming back to your content, right? Writing for a bot won't do it.
6) Failing Blogging SEO - Making every other sentence on your blog bold or adding new keywords that breakup the readability of your post doesn't make sense. Stop listening to people that don't have a clue about SEO! Google knows when a reader leaves your page before they have spent enough time to read it and will punish you with their algorithm. Like I wrote in #5, write for the reader, not for the bots.
7) Adding Widgets to Your Website - When you add some widgets to your website they effectively help the companies that host the widget to rank higher for your local keywords on Google. Just plain dumb, isn't it? If you're going to add a widget, make sure it doesn't have a backlink to your competitor's website.
8) Failing Twitter - Sending your ads to Twitter 3+ times a day via a monitoring site like Hootsuite is not proper social media etiquette. Monitoring sites have been developed to monitor conversations on multiple accounts. Worse than posting your ads on Twitter is not responding to a question in a timely manner. If you're going to post daily, monitor the responses. Again dropping your content and doing nothing else is not what social media is about.
9) Failing Facebook Groups - Please stop spamming Facebook groups that you belong to with your ads or post about another group you are starting. Most Facebook Groups are there to share ideas not for you to spam your ads or scrape the members to another group. Add niche content that fits with the group the members will find useful. In addition, if you're going to ask a question or add content on a Facebook Group, stay around for the conversation.
10) Failing Social Media Profiles - It is Interesting that there are more Kansas City business people who act more like secret agents than business people. Have you looked at their profiles? Their profiles are either not completed or blocked. If you're in business to actually do business in Kansas City, start by completing your social media profiles.That means complete the biography sections and add a profile picture. If you want to act like a secret agent, that is ok, just don't get upset when people don't follow you or ignore your post.Secret agents don't make great sales people in Kansas City.
11) Failing Social Media Reciprocation - Social media is not all about you. To be successful with social media you need to reciprocate! When someone makes a comment on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ do you visit their stream and comment back on something they posted? Do you ever share their content? You need to find your social media ambassadors and connect with them frequently. This is how you make more connections with people. It is how you grow your following. Ignoring them will hurt you in the long run. Again stop thinking about social media as place to drop your content and you will be far more successful!
12) Failing Social Media Networking - This is interesting . . . Somebody you may know or not know just went on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ and wrote an endorsement about your Kansas City business. Not only do you not thank the person who endorsed your business publicly, but you don't even endorse their business. Sad isn't it? Last Wednesday and Thursday after two networking groups had their weekly meetings, I saw over 10 public endorsements of 2 featured businesses. One business publicly thanked the public endorsements and that was it. The second business did nothing back publicly. Both businesses ended the social media wave by not keeping it going. If both businesses would have publicly thanked their endorsers then publicly endorsed the businesses back they would have kept the wave going. I have seen 50 post spin off of one endorsement post. Other people started chiming in and joining the conversation. That is lots of extra exposure isn't it?
13) Failing How to Post on Social Media - I know this should be a no brainer but I added this one last because I see this one abused the most. Sure there are a few friends that want to know what syrup you used on your pancakes this morning. Most don't though. When posting on social media, post content worthy content that your friends would like to read. Post content that is informative, entertaining, educational, and that fits your audience.
If these are the kinds of things that annoy you too please share this with anyone who makes these mistakes.
I would like to thank, Bill Gassett, for the idea, start and quite a few points for this post.
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