Wednesday, 22 September 2010

My Social Media Blunders

So after reading atleast a hundred blogs and articles on what to do to promote your company/product online, and speaking to experts on the field I thought of implementing the methods and try to find the results for myself. I'm not not here to tell you what worked for me. Instead let me share where I failed, and failed miserably.
Mutual Purpose: So when I tried to get people to join an online community my conversion was hardly one fourth. Disappointing for sure but the main reason was that I was trying to give people what they where not interested in. Also i am assuming that the small fraction that did join in, simply did so because I(as a friend) had sent the request or some simply joined in without any real interest. Finding the balance between what people want and what you offer is not that easy. If you get that, hey you cracked it!

The Facebook Craze: This particular social network is more for the community than it is for the bottom line, and its tough for marketers to get their message in on a site that's focused on communicating with your friends rather than finding stuff to buy. I made this mistake. I tried to sell rather than communicate. People will buy if they get a hang of a product. Don't push on them, they will retaliate.

Keep it alive and kicking: Nothing happens more often than you might realize. Stagnating pages, inactive communities and your social media endeavor is burdened with dead weight and will slowly slip out with little or no fanfare. Be it your blog, forum, pages or applications, if you don't ignite it, you don't accomplish anything; except perhaps successfully wasting your time, energy and perhaps even your money.

The wrong people: Just because one has a profile on a social network or one twittered once, does not mean that he is regular or socially active online. Yes, they did give me an impressive "likes" or "members" but that's not exactly the big win I was hoping for. I was toasted. My space looked like it was an "only admin campaign". I actually brought in a bunch of "Web Gazing Sheep" who would actually consume anything but media.

Get People Talking Aint Enough: OK so i was successful in one of my ventures to establish a mutual value for my  target audience. My venture seemed successful in establishing trust and credibility. But was I able to discover the new black for the next season? I failed again. Interaction ceased and I lost my audience.

My Content Sucked: My big fat blunder. I got involved in social media, my enthusiasm was great and I probably had it in spades at the start of my venture. But instead of creating  content that get most attention, I focused too much on meaningful content. End result, it was dull and boring, not the kinds that the people in the community liked.

Absent today, kicked tomorrow: The online world moves faster than your world. You stagnate once and you loose your viewers forever. When you are on the Web World just keep a finger on the pulse of the readers. Where do they move? On the orbit that offers the most. Everyday a new orbit is formed and if you are slow you are publicly outed.

Lesson Learned:
What one might consider a success may be a failure to someone else, depending on the desired outcome.
 
Number of hits does not equal Number of reads.
 
The more the members, the more merrier - So not true
 
Don't do the "Hard Sell".
 
Don't show up as a company spokesperson, brand representative, sales executive or anything else - Simply show up as a Real Human Being.

1 comment:

  1. You might want to search the phrase "Social Media Optimization" and get pretty good analysis and others' experiences.

    Meghana

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