With the growing popularization of social media many people perform blunders in haste. Let us discuss how to avoid these networking faux-pas.

Social media is an amalgamation of sociology and technology, in other words, a better way to disseminate information. It largely helps in the democratization of information, news and data. It has become the next big revolution, which benefits in connecting with the world on any platform such as personal, political and business.

As social media becomes more mainstream and more powerful, the stakes to game it gets stronger too. Talking about business, most people launch into social media without any sort of plan.

Like any part of your marketing strategy, you need structure and focus for it to work well. Many businesses fall foul to the most common social media mistakes.

Inconsistent Posting:

Many forget the “social” part of social media. The entire point of using social media for your business is to interact with your customers. Social media needs to be treated like any part of the marketing mix and that means you need to be consistent.

Assign some time where you only concentrate on looking at what other people have been posting, and then spend some time engaging people in conversations. You should also work out a schedule for posting things like images, offers and links. Don’t crowd the timeline with too many posts but make sure you are around enough that no one forgets about you.

A poorly run social media account can make any company look bad fast because it conveys the impression that the company is neither organized nor committed to either the medium or the company’s fan base.

Caring more about sales than connections:

You might be using social media to make more sales but people don’t want to be sold to. The biggest rule of social media is that- you can’t try too hard to make a sale. If you put more efforts into creating personal connections, the sales will naturally follow. People want to be treated like people, not cash cows. Make your social media pages as much about your customers as they are about you. Don’t just link to your website and hope that’s all it takes to engage with people. Respect your customers; make an effort to connect with them and you won’t be disappointed with the results.

Not being active enough:

You cannot expect to get significant results out of your social media marketing campaign if you are only checking and updating your pages once a week. You should stay involved with your pages on a daily basis, posting new content or commenting on or answering posts or questions from your followers. Follow people you find interesting as well as people you think might b interested in your business.

You also need to make sure that if a customer asks a question over social media, reply as quickly as you can because leaving questions unanswered makes it look like you don’t care about the customer service. To maximize your efforts with business social media, consider opportunities to interact online to be a veritable goldmine for connecting with your prospects in real time.

Respond directly to comments and questions and follow up with a personal message, if the user provides the phone number or email address in his or her account information. Quick and direct responses will pleasantly surprise potential customers, and you will present your organization as one that cares.

The danger with using social media irregularly when it comes to your business is that your customers and prospects won’t know when or how to find you, they’ll stop looking after a while.

Frequent updates to your social media pages give you greater visibility and encourage your followers to check your page more often.

Not having a plan:

While social media is a much more flexible and ever changing form of media than most other types, that does not mean you should not have a solid plan in place.

Create schedules for sharing content or making posts and have an overall marketing strategy in place to guide the direction of your social media campaign.

The business and marketing paradigm has changed, without a plan you are at competitive disadvantage right from the start.

Every business no matter how large or small needs to develop a plan, goals and timeline expectations in order to build a successful social media campaign.

Treating it like a traditional marketing channel:

Unlike traditional marketing mediums, social media isn’t a push marketing channel. Sure, people expect to see the occasional piece of company news or promotional update, but they also hope to interact with your brand in a more casual manner while obtaining helpful information that’s relevant to their needs. Talk less, listen more.

People will be more interested in what you have to say if you take time to listen instead of try and force your message upon them.

Mixing social and business ups the opportunities as well as the stakes. It has the potential to affect the entire organization, from stakeholder to customer. While you want to be careful not to make common mistakes, you also want to be proactive in managing your social media strategy.

Today’s all-encompassing world of social media magnifies our mistakes to a degree that most of us are probably uncomfortable with, perhaps that’s the reason there are more “lurkers” who would rather silently observe and “listen in” to chatter, without being an active participant in the conversation.

But marketers can be empowered with information, instead of shrinking back in far.

Enhancing relationships with customers and stakeholders is the goal of mixing social and marketing. Social media is an excellent way to springboard your business to online stardom, but, its tools can be more detrimental than beneficial if they aren’t used properly.

At the end of the day, brands must earn their “social currency.” There are no shortcuts or substitutes to authentic engagement in the realm of social media.