In today’s digital world, it is easy for consumers to get overwhelmed. For a number of years, companies have been bombarding people with advertisements across the internet. Now, with Facebook, Google, YouTube and other popular websites available to us constantly through our smartphones and tablets, most people find advertising in their face all day long.
While a consumer’s constant exposure to your company is not a bad thing, many businesses go about achieving that goal in a way which doesn’t leave the most positive thoughts in the customer’s mind. Social media can be a great marketing tool for your company, but you need to make sure that you are not spamming your customers away.
Overposting
We all have them on Facebook –friends who post what seems like every hour throughout the day, updating us on each facet of their lives. It’s annoying, isn’t it? That is the same way in which consumers view companies who overpost on social media sites. Unless you are constantly providing content which is of interest to the consumer, overposting will leave your viewers with a bad taste of your company and products.
It is important to note, that many companies have had great success with very frequent posting, given that what they were posting was relevant and interesting to their audience. That leads into the biggest reason for overposting – constant advertising.
Constant Advertising
I get it – you want to make sure the customer knows your products, service and prices are 100% the best around. You constantly reassure them of that to ensure that everyone sees the message and knows about your company. You’re right – it may take a few posts for everyone to get your message, but what about the consumers who are always on social media, and see nothing from you but massive amounts of advertisements?
Like I said before, many companies do well with posting a lot of content – the key is to ensure that only a small portion of that are advertisements. Add funny or conversation-starting content to your social media pages in order to give consumers a good sense of your company – then I promise they won’t mind the occasional advertisement being thrown in there.
Incomplete Profiles
You would be surprised at how many businesses fail to understand this concept. Some entrepreneurs and business leaders think that the best thing that they can do is claim their virtual real estate – set up as many profiles and pages on as many different social media sites as possible. That way, the customer is more likely to come across one of their pages, right?
Right, but the problem is that often in the haste to expand as quickly as possible, the business owner does not do a thorough job in completing each page. Profiles just have the most basic information about the firm, are rarely (if ever) updated, and generally just link back to the company’s main website. These kinds of pages often destroy customer confidence in the company because of the unprofessional appearance.
The best plan is to focus your time and efforts onto constantly maintaining and growing a fewer number of social media pages. Producing more complete, updated, and useful pages will not only satisfy your customers, but also receive positive responses from the search engines.
Using the Same Content for all Social Media
So you have a few different social media sites that you focus your efforts on, and you update them fairly regularly with useful and interesting content mixed in with your advertisements. Now where are you going wrong? Be sure that you are not using the same content on all of the different social media pages you maintain.
Many social media users frequent a number of different sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It’s likely that if they follow your company on one social media outlet, that they are also going to on the other ones which they use. Going back to what we mentioned earlier, constantly seeing the same material across a number of social media sites will have a similar irritating effect on the consumer.
In order for your business to grow, you need to make sure that your exposure to consumers is constantly increasing. Many businesses are now seeing that social media is the venue through which to reach an ever-increasing number of new customers. It’s important that while you are trying to grow your business via social media that you do not spam your customers with your message in a manner that may sour their image of you.