Five Common Social Media Mistakes To Avoid

by Colin Kennedy 22 February 2010

written by Colin Kennedy 22 February 2010

Founder and Chairman of BNI Dr Ivan Misner will be joining us on this blog. While we set-up Dr Misner’s user identity, here’s his latest blog…

Five Common Social Media Mistakes To Avoid

By Dr Ivan Misner

Below are the top five common mistakes that businesses make when it comes to social media networking–avoid all of these.

1.Spending too much time on sites you enjoy and not fully evaluating whether that particular site is the most effective one for your efforts.

2.Going onto a site for “work” and then running down rabbit holes getting distracted by friends who may have posted something interesting or something that requires a response.

3.Not being able to properly define when it is more cost-effective to delegate certain social media responsibilities to someone else to handle.

4.Setting up a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter page and then not keeping it populated–consistency and fresh content are key.

5.Forgetting that social media is about engaging in the conversation and not just about selling.

What other mistakes have you seen?

Colin Kennedy

Colin is the Marketing Director of BNI New Zealand, a director of Iron Road Ltd and a professional speaker and copywriter. While this is an outsourced function, Colin manages - at an executive level - all marketing and communication functions for BNI New Zealand. Colin is also the official spokesman for BNI New Zealand, and is responsible for building relationships with media and partners, including Hospice NZ, as well as representing BNI at all public speaking engagements (when BNI receives requests to talk at those functions). The core focus of his business is writing compelling copy for clients. Colin believes that in this era of low trust, social media and word of mouth dominance, a different approach to marketing is needed - one about conversation, relationships, engaging stories, delivering value... "We have to engage the market with compelling 'stories'; we have to influence the people who influence the customer's buying behaviour, we have to join the conversation. "People don't like to be sold to anymore. They like to shop." His business is to develop strategies for clients using compelling messages and stories for websites, email blasts, newsletters, brochures, press releases, articles etc. to increase leads, improve conversion rates and raise profile.

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5 comments

Victoria Trafton 22 February 2010 - 11:27 am

I agree with all your points. For business purposes, I also think it is important to provide value when you post/blog/tweet. Whether it is your content or commenting on someone else’s content. If you can’t add to the value of what is posted with additional perspective or information, what’s the purpose or value to others.

Graham Southwell 22 February 2010 - 2:48 pm

Thanks Colin – and how great is it that we are now going to be featuring posts from Dr Ivan Misner 🙂

Graham

Graham Southwell 22 February 2010 - 3:16 pm

Hi Victoria,
Great to have someone from the Referral Institute reading our blog 🙂 We are still waiting for the RI in NZ -but in the meantime would welcome any posts/material you might like to share with the readers of this blog. We featured a post from the President of RI – Mike Macedonio a few months ago.
All the best,
Graham Southwell

Paul Meyer 22 February 2010 - 3:50 pm

Thanks Colin great topic.

I popped “Ivan Networker Misner” into a Google search for interest & he comes up in the top 10 – no surprises!.

Number one is from a Social Networking Site Ecademy.

I tried “Paul Enthuser Meyer” and that came up number one from Ecademy as well.

My conclusion from this is Social Networking sites must have their place but agree it is the time factor as to who manages this process of keeping the information current.

Keep smiling 🙂

Paul

Peter Lowish 10 March 2010 - 12:50 pm

From a resource point of view of a small business, it is difficult to create a social networking strategy that is sustainable.

If you are going to do it, you have to commit, or end up like us who have had a blog for some time, but don’t post often enough.

From my (older person but net savy) point of view, twitter is a complete waste of time, but networks such as facebook and linkedin can be a good resource to work at.

It all takes time, and dont expect instant results – it wont happen

good subject for my education slot tomorrow. Thanks

cheers
Peter

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Five Common Social Media Mistakes To Avoid

Mini Workshop – Benefits 004

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