How Not to Use Your Company Social Channels

Social media platforms give businesses opportunities to recruit new customers, stay connected with existing customers and build influential brands. Unfortunately, a lot of companies make serious mistakes when they try to develop social media campaigns.

Make sure your company doesn't fall prey to these common mistakes. They could stunt the business's growth and tarnish your brand's identity.

They Don't Complete Their Profiles

Every social media platform from Twitter to YouTube lets businesses fill out profiles that provide detailed information to readers. Too many companies look at their profiles as technicalities. Instead of spending time crafting their profile pages, they leave them incomplete or only provide amateurish content.

When you open a social media account, pay close attention to what you include in your profile. Make sure your words, images, and other content represent your brand perfectly. If you want people to think of your business as a friend, then use a friendly tone that includes jokes and advice (see Charmin's Facebook page for a great example). If you want to come across as a serious brand, then get straight to the point and avoid filler (General Electric's Facebook page gives you a good example of this).

However you decide to approach your profile, you should at least make sure that you fill it out completely.

They Respond to Negative Feedback Negatively

Any company that uses social media will eventually encounter negative feedback. At times, your company may deserve the negative comments. At other times, you may feel that the comments are unfair. Regardless, you cannot react negatively to your followers. Doing so will make your brand look antagonistic and childish.

Don't be childish.

Instead of fighting against customers, use social media comments as an opportunity to interact with them in positive ways. The very least you can do is offer an apology and a solution. Anything short of that will continue to get negative attention online.

Whole Foods does a terrific job of turning social media comments into positive interactions. When customers ask questions or complain, a customer service rep deals with the situation quickly in a friendly manner. By taking this approach, Whole Foods makes it likely that it will retain upset customers. It may even attract new customers who are impressed by the company's maturity and attention to detail.

They Don't Make the Most of Social Media Features

Each social media platform excels at specific things. With Twitter, you get a quick way to communicate short messages. With YouTube, you get an opportunity to share short or long videos with high production values.

Many companies don't spend time thinking about the best ways to deliver content to their followers. Instead of uploading a video to YouTube, they will try to use Facebook. While Facebook will let you upload video, its features don't support media as well as YouTube does.

When creating a social media campaign, decide which types of content you will contribute to each of your channels. You'll get more positive attention by taking advantage of each platform's best features.

They Focus Too Much on Promoting Themselves

Social media isn't all about brand promotion. Smart companies use their social media pages to interact with customers in fun, educational ways. They may even participate in conversations about recent events. By avoiding constant promotions, brands can make themselves seem like people who want to participate in the fun side of social media.

Innocent Drinks takes a good approach to communicating with followers instead of shoving promotions onto their timelines. The company has used its Twitter account to show people how to turn empty bottles into bird feeders. When Prince Harry announced his engagement to Meghan Markle, Innocent Drinks, a British company, asked its followers if everyone would get a day off for the wedding.

Effective social media campaigns take experience, planning, and attention to detail. If you're making any of the above mistakes, then you should start exploring better ways to use social media.

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