Why Your Social Networking Is Not Working

Firstly, what does that mean? How do you know if your social networking is working? You’re busy sending tweets, sharing stuff on Facebook, and you’ve practically broken your camera phone using Instagram. Of course it’s working! Hmm.

Ultimately though, it’s about what you’re getting back for all the time and effort you’re expending. You want to know – and your boss wants to know too. Is your social networking working?

It starts, like most successful activities, with your aims. What do you want from it? For businesses this ought to be simple: raising brand awareness, PR, customer care, or attracting new clients. Take your pick. Whatever your goal, you’re reading this article because you know you’re not getting it right and want to know how to fix it. Well you’re in luck.

You Have no Focus

Do you know why are you there? Are you on too many platforms? Or just on the wrong platforms? Spreading your efforts too thinly can damage everything you do. Instead of rushing to share on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok every day, choose which ones are most likely to help you engage with your markets and stick to creating outstanding content that is shareable on those platforms. It’s not rocket science, but your online actions should be focused. Always ask yourself: “how does this status update help me achieve our goals?” before you post.

You’ve Been Neglecting it

You started well, full of enthusiasm. Tweeting about everything under the sun, sharing pictures of your dog on Facebook. But didn’t get immediate results; where were the thousands of clients just waiting to hear from you? It began to feel like you were talking to yourself, so you lost interest and decided that maybe this social media thing isn’t so good after all and moved on to other things. Here’s the thing though, I talk to businesses every day about there social media and there’s one clear difference between the successful ones and those who can’t seem to get it to work. The successful ones have (a) a focused approach and (b) stick with it longer.

It’s All About You

I was running a social media training session recently and someone said they didn’t like Twitter because they didn’t do enough things to tell people about. The assumption was that Twitter is meant to be a sort of narcissistic public diary. If you think that too, this is the reason why your social media isn’t working. Don’t talk about yourself; talk about the amazing things that the people around you are doing. If you think your followers want to hear what you’re up to all day, you’d better have a fascinating life. Alternatively, you could share links to content that interests your followers. What interests them? Try anything that will help them become more valuable personally or productive professionally.

You Don’t Have Conversations

You think being social is about letting everyone know what you’re doing. But you’re not interested in what other people are doing. News Flash: when you do that it makes us think you only want our money. Try this for one month: share what others are doing and what makes them stand out, and do this 20 times more often than you talk about yourself. If at the end of that month you don’t have more friends and followers who are talking about how good you are, I’ll eat my words and you can go back to talking about your special discounts 24/7.

You Still Think it’s a Numbers Game

If you think being social is about collecting Followers or Likes, you are making the oldest mistake in the book. There are so many mutual follow-back schemes on Twitter that it can sometimes feel like your number one task should be to pump up your numbers. But you’d be wrong. You can go onto Fiverr or eBay today and buy 10,000 followers or Facebook Likes for less that the cost of your lunch if all you want is numbers. But what use are they? Will they still be following you in six months? Will they buy your products? Will they recommend your services to clients? Of course not. Only real people who are following you for real reasons do that. I’d rather have 100 followers who understand and believe in the integrity of my work than 100,000 meaningless numbers. Wouldn’t you? Trust me, start by making friends. If you put work into developing relationships the rest will follow,

Action Points

Decide early on why you’re using social media. Set goals and targets with timescales and measure your effectiveness against them. Remember that it’s not about you. Start some conversations. Stop chasing numbers and start creating relationships.

Need some help with your business social networking?

Get in touch with Design Inspiration on 01752 784197 or use the form in the sidebar for a no-strings chat with me. If I can’t come up with at least 3 tips to improve what you do, the coffee’s on me.