Social Media Marketing: – What Not to Do :Easy Fixes For the Mistakes You Already Made and Didn’t Even Know It!”

Mistake #1 Trying to closely follow everybody in Twitter

You can’t possibly do it; and trying is a great way to guarantee you’re going to waste a ton of time.

Instead, what you want to do is set up lists within Twitter, so that you’re closely following only those people who are most important to you: people who have recently subscribed to your newsletter, people who have made a low-ticket purchase and you’d like them to make a high-ticket purchase, people you’ve met recently at a networking event. So you take those names and put them into a list in Twitter (I actually prefer using HootSuite for

this) and now you can watch a stream of just those people. So you know that anybody who’s in that stream is a good person to interact with, because they’re likely to be putting money in your pocket in the short term. And you’re avoiding following all the people who are just white noise to you and who are never going to do any good for you in your business.

Mistake #2 Trying to follow the posts of everybody on your Facebook wall.

You can’t do it, and trying is a guaranteed way to waste a lot of time. Instead, you want to put the people who are most important to you – that means the people who are

most likely to buy from you (or the ones who are most likely to spread the good word about you, even if they themselves never buy) – onto a Friend list. The people you want to put there are the ones who have recently signed up for your newsletter, or they’ve recently bought a small-ticket item and you’d like for them to buy a larger-ticket item, or

they’re a potential business partner or investor who you’d like to strike a deal with. These are all people you’d like to develop that relationship with on Facebook. The way you do that is you put them in a friend list. A lot of people think that the purpose of friend lists is to be able to mass message people. So they say, “You can only have a friend list with 20

people.” You can only send a message to 20 people at a time; but you can put as many people as you want into a friend list for the purpose I’m talking about – being able to closely follow what they’re saying, so you can interact with them, develop that relationship and that sweet spot, and get them to buy from you.

Mistake #3 is to over-automate your social media profiles.

You can set up all kinds of stuff to automate. You can have your You Tube videos, your tweets, your blog posts all automatically posted to your Facebook account; you can have your tweets automatically posted to your blog and to Facebook; you can use ping.fm to blast your message out to 50 sites all at once. And you can make yourself f a little bit nuts with all that over-automation. To start with, you should only be focusing on three profiles – Twitter, Face book and LinkedIn. It’s really not that big of a deal to log in and post messages on all three every day. It just takes a minute or two to do each one; and until you’ve got your head wrapped around all of this it is a mistake to over-automate your social media profiles.

Mistake #4 Posting tweets without a headline.

This is huge! How many times have you been on Twitter or Facebook or even LinkedIn and seen a post that said, “Check out this video, it’s hilarious!” Well how do I know it’s going to be hilarious? I might not have the same sense of humor as you. Why do I want to spend my time clicking on your link and watching your video? If you want me to click on your link and take action, you gotta do what writers and journalists of all kinds have been doing since the invention of the printing press to get their readers’ attention – you gotta write a headline! You gotta tell me what’s in it for me if I take action, if I click on your link.

What am I gonna get out of it? So think of your tweets and updates like a headline – they’re what catches the person’s interest and gives them a benefit so they take action and click on your link. this is really important, especially if that link you’re sending them to is a place where you’re going to make money.

Mistake #5 is putting a link in your tweet or your facebook update that goes straight to

your website or your sales letter. People might click on your link but they’re immediately going to click away, they’re not going to take action. Your conversion rate will go through the floor, it’s going to be a negative number. Instead, you’ve gotta take people who are in your social media profile – they’re interacting with you, talking to you, they think you’re fun – and you’ve got to take them to some neutral, informative, helpful content. You’ve gotta create a video, or write a blog post or an article that provides helpful information.

Then at the end of that video or blog post you give them a link to go to your website where they can opt in to your list or buy your introductory product, or what have you. Taking that intermediary step is necessary to warm them up and get them accustomed to the transition from social-media-chatty to whip-out-your-credit-card-business. If you don’t do it, you’ll never see any money in your pocket from your social media.

Mistake #6 is to not integrate social media with the marketing you’re already doing.

What a waste of time! If you’re already doing email marketing, if you’re already doing direct mail, you want to be using some of the same strategies on social media. A great way to do this with Facebook is to capture the email addresses of the people who visit your

Facebook page. And the way you do that is you download an app called MyInfoBox. It’s by a developer called XtremelySocial. All you do is install the app, copy the code from aWeber or whoever generates your optin form code for you, click update and voila – you have an optin box in the left-hand column of your facebook wall. Awesome way to collect the email addresses of the people who are visiting your facebook wall, and send them your email messages, integrating it with the marketing you’re already doing.

Mistake #7 is trying to keep your personal life and your professional life separate on

social media. YES, that’s a big mistake! And I know for a lot of people that’s a big concern. They think to themselves, “Well gosh, I don’t want all of my friends to get bombarded with all of my sales messages; and I don’t want my professional contacts to see all of my personal updates.” BOTH of those are flawed thinking, and let me tell you why.

Social media – part of the reason it works so well – is because it is a 24/7 rapport-building machine. We all know that if you want to sell something to somebody, the first thing that you have to do is build rapport, right? Classic salesmanship 101. You walk into the appointment, you shake hands with the person, do you immediately begin talking about the deal? No, you get into conversation, you start asking them questions. What are some of the questions you could ask? How old are your kids? Where’d you go for dinner las night/ Do you like to ski? You’re getting to know someone as a person, you’re building that rapport. That’s what social media does for you, 24/7, when you’re putting your personal stuff out there. So the customers you’ve connected with are seeing your personal stuff. It’s like you’re having that conversation 24 hours a day. So you don’t want to give up that opportunity of having your personal stuff where your customers can see it. On the other hand, if you say, “I don’t want my Aunt Mildred to get mad about all my sales messages,” well I’ll tell you what. If you’re sending out so many sales messages that your Aunt Mildred or your college friends would get annoyed by them – your customers would too! Think of it

this way. The people who are on Facebook and Twitter with you WILL buy from you. But if they are in this moment thinking about buying, they’re not on Facebook. They’re on Google. So when they’re on Facebook, they’re thinking about seeing personal stuff. They want to goof off, have some fun, check out what their friends are up to. You have to meet them in that mindset …. but also sneak in just a little mention of how you could help them with what you do professionally. If instead you put out a bunch of sales messages, when they’re trying to relax and have some fun, they’re going to be as annoyed as your Aunt Mildred or your college friends would be, and they’re going to unfriend you.

So don’t make the mistake of keeping your personal and your professional lives separate on social media. You want to keep them together. That’s going to help make sure that you’re doing what you need to be doing on social media, and doing it well and getting good results.

Mistake #8 is hiring a low-paid assistant to do all your social media for you.

How many people do this, and it’s such a mistake! Think about it this way. If you didn’t know how to build a website, would you go hire a $4/hr VA to build your website? No, probably not. Because you don’t know if it’s going to be good or bad – you’re going to hire a high-level person to do it right. The same thing is true of social media. If you don’t know what you’re doing, if you can’t tell the person what to do, and you can’t monitor the person, supervise them, and make sure that they’re doing it right and they’re getting the desired results and outcomes, then you’ve got to hire somebody who knows what they’re doing at a high level. That means you’re going to have to pay them a high-level salary. Do not make the mistake of wasting money and wasting weeks and months “building a profile” with

someone who all they’re doing is sending out tweets. Anybody can send out tweets. The value is in the marketing strategy behind what you’re saying. And some low-level person doesn’t have any idea about your business, or the strategy behind marketing it effectively with social media. So pay somebody what they’re worth, and/or learn how to do it yourself.

Mistake #9 is spending time on anything but the big three – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There are lots of other social media sites out there – plaxo, BrightKite, Diigo, identi.ca and so many others. And they’re all good, I’m not saying any of them are bad. It’s just that you don’t want to be spending your time on them initially. When you’ve got your Twitter and your Facebook and your LinkedIn so they’re banging, and you’re really getting some success and some results out of those, then you can go and do the others. But in the meantime, it’s a mistake to be spending time on those others.

Mistake #10 is to use different photos on your different social media profiles. Or, changing your photo a lot. Remember, your photo is your logo – it’s the picture, the visual, that people know you by. So if they see you looking one way on Facebook and another way on Twitter, it’s going to be jarring. They might not even know if it’s you or not. Especially if you’ve got a really common name like Mike Smith. And if you look really different – you’ve got a beard in one and no beard in the other, they’re not going to know if it’s you or not.

So it’s important to look consistent in your photos, and here’s a great way to do that. You can do it really casual. Do it by yourself, or get a friend to do it with you. go outside if you can, or go by a Christmas tree if it’s the holidays, and do a series of photographs all in one place, wearing the same outfit, all in the same place, with the same general lighting. Then you can use those different photographs across your different profiles. So there’ll be a little bit of variety, but people still know it’s you. Great tip for making consistent branding on your social media and to not do it is a mistake.

Mistake #11 is on Facebook sending a friend request without a message. Big mistake that 8 out of 10, if not 9 out of 10, people make. How often do you receive friend requests that just have the person’s picture, and their name? And maybe it’s not their real name, or it’s a picture in which you don’t recognize them, so you have no idea who they are or how you know them. You’re not going to accept that friend request. If you do what I’m about to tell you to do, you’re going to double the number of people who will accept your friend request, and quadruple the number of people who will end up doing business with you as a result.

What you want to do, with every single friend request, is send a message. And that message should do three things. Number one, it should say something about the other person. Because when you talk about them, you’re building rapport. Number two, you want to say a little bit about yourself. And I’m talking a little bit, like 18 words at the most. Some people go on for a paragraph – so boring! And, when you’re talking about yourself, make sure that you include a benefit statement. Nobody cares anything about you at all until they know “what’s in it for me?” Don’t just say, “here’s what I do.” Say instead, “Here’s how it will benefit you to know me and be connected to me.” So that’s number two. And number three, you want to always ask a question. Why? Because that’s when they write back to you. This is all about a dialogue. Now they know what you do, they know that

there’s a benefit, and now they’re talking back to you. Can you say hot prospect for a customer? Absolutely. So do not pass up the opportunity to build rapport and to plant those seeds for a potential new customer by using the friend request message. Big mistake if you’re passing that up.

Mistake #12 is to have the mentality of building a list. I know people always say “the money’s in the list” – and that is not true! Effective social media isn’t about building a huge list – it’s about the relationship you have with the people on your list. If you think of the people on your list as just a list, by definition you’re going to have a lousy relationship with them. They’re being treated like a spam recipient. They’re not going to like you or want to do business with you, so get rid of that mentality. You CAN get 1000s or even 10s of 1000s of people interacting with you on social media. AND, that is not the goal. You can’t be thinking mass. You’ve got to be thinking one on one relationships; one on one conversations. But, with a megaphone attached. Because of the way that Facebook and Twitter and all the others work, when you’re talking one on one with an individual person, dozens – maybe hundreds – of people are potentially hearing that interaction. That’s what makes it so powerful. Do not make the mistake of thinking that it’s about mass messaging a large number of people. It’s about effective, one on one communication … to a large audience.

Mistake #13 is to post the same tweet over and over again. The reason this is a mistake is because Twitter’s going to shut you down (facebook too)! I’m sure you all know somebody who’s had their twitter account suspended or shut down altogether. And one of the big reasons that Twitter does this is if you post the same tweet over and over again – especially if that tweet contains a link. Or, if you post one tweet out of ten different profiles.

Which, by the way, is a huge mistake, I’m not even going to go into that one. If you’re trying to manage 10 different Twitter profiles – forget about it, you’re making too many mistakes to even be reading this report. So do not post the same tweet over and over again. It’s a great way to get yourself shut down on Twitter – obviously a mistake.

Mistake #14 is to send out lame auto-follow messages on Twitter. It’s what people on Twitter hate more than just about anything. It’s when you follow somebody and they send out an automated message that says, “Thanks for following me, here’s my website.” It’s

so annoying! Now, I’m not saying don’t use the auto-follow message necessarily; but if you do you’ve got to be really crafty with it. For example, use it as a way to get to know people. Ask them a question about themselves; give them a benefit statement; tell them what you’ll be tweeting about so they know if they want to listen more closely or not. Those are good reasons to use the auto-follow. Do not make the mistake of saying “Thanks for following me, here’s my blog.” You’re going to annoy people, and some of them are going to auto-follow you right on the spot.

Mistake #15 is to post too much business content. This is a huge one. You do not want to be sending out tweet after tweet about business. In general, 75% of your content should be personal content, 25% should be business content. Now let’s break that down a minute.

Personal content doesn’t just mean what you had for lunch. That’d be boring. But personal means what inspires you, if you’re attending an event or you just had a great meeting – inspirational stuff really gets to people. Even the holiday messages – happy mother’s day, merry Christmas. All that falls under the category of personal. And also, you should talk about what you had for lunch! The 25% that’s business, that can’t all be just links to your stuff by the way. Some of that has to be links to other people’s stuff. Other people that are in your industry, you should be talking about. Because you know what? Your customers are interested in people besides you. And if you provide information about other things that they’re interested in, they’re going to follow you much more closely. And to not do it – to put out tweets about just your stuff – is a huge mistake.

Mistake #16 is to not let your customers see you as a person. What you really want to do is let people see you. It’s all about rapport. Social media is a 24/7 rapport-building machine. It’s really easy for them to get to know you, like you and trust you. And why do you want that? Because then it’s really easy to put an offer in front of them and get them to buy your offer. No salesmanship required. Just put an offer in front of somebody who knows you, likes you and trust you and bam – it’s just about like having their credit card. You want to make sure to let people know you, personally. Do not make the mistake of eliminating the personal stuff from your social media profiles. You’ll defeat the whole purpose of why social media works so well.

Mistake #17 is to not engage with your best customers on a regular basis. How do you engage with only your best customers? We covered that in some of the other mistakes

in this report. However, you definitely want to engage with them on a regular basis. Once you’ve identified who they are, and you’ve set up your system with lists so that it’s easy to

follow just them, you definitely want to be communicating with them. Why? Because even if what they’re saying is something that to you isn’t very interesting – they’re talking about golf, and you don’t play golf, for instance – well, if it’s interesting to them, it behooves you for it to be interesting to you. Because you want to do business with this person. And the point we’ve been saying throughout all these mistakes is that in order to do business, you want to build rapport. And the way that you build rapport is to like someone. To show interest in them. It’s the best way for them to like you and be interested in you back. So you definitely want to be engaging with your best customers – commenting on their golf game, or their kids’ home run, or about their first-ever 7-mile run. Whatever it is that’s important to them – comment on it, show that you’re interested in them, it’s a great way to build rapport and build your business. And to not do it is a huge mistake.

Mistake #18 is not posting enough content about people besides yourself. Guess what guys? Social media is social! You gotta talk about people other than yourself. If all you’re talking about is you and what you’re up to, that’s going to get pretty boring after a while.

Throw in some stuff about the people that you’re watching on television or on social media, or the people you’re meeting with, or the books that you’re reading. Anything at all! Involve some other people in the conversations you’re putting out. What else is going on in your industry? By throwing in a variety of information not just all about you, you make yourself much more interesting to your potential customers. And of course they’re going to come back and listen to you much more. And the more they’re listening to you, the likelier they’re going to spend their money with you. So to not do it is a huge mistake.

Mistake #19 is writing boring updates. This is a big one! No matter what it is you’re talking about, if you’re a boring writer, you’re going to bore people. No one’s going to want to listen to you. For example, do not say: “I’m having grilled cheese for lunch, what are you having?” That’s boring. Instead, if you said, “I’m having the perfect grilled cheese sandwich – two slices of cheddar, one slice of muenster, and a pickle on the side. How do you take your grilled cheese?” that would be much more interestin! You’re not going to win any prizes for literature with that one, but it’s more interesting than the first one. If you want some really good examples of great Tweet-writing, follow @zappos. Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos and he’s really just a master at turning a phrase. I highly recommend you follow him to learn how to write some interesting tweets. Because writing boring tweets is a huge mistake.

Mistake #20 Is knocking it before you try it. In other words, are you even ON social media? Do it already! I know there’s some of you out there thinking, it’s dumb, it’s a waste of time, I’m not going to make any money … don’t knock it til you try it!

After all, as of December 2009, Facebook has 350 million users worldwide. And, those people are on there an average of 21 minutes a day. And I’ve got news for ya – if the person sitting next to you wasn’t on Facebook for 20 minutes today, that means the person on the other side of you was on for 40 minutes! So there’s a huge number of people on there, and they’re on there for a lot of time, and if you can figure out how you can capture just a little bit of that face time will put huge money in your pocket. So don’t just discard it. You gotta get started. For some additional resources from me: 47-minute DVD with 6 tutorial videos, several of which were mentioned in this report. “How to Get YOUR Tweets and Updates Read by your Followers” Resources and Shortcuts Kit. Action plans, more than 500 tweet starters to copy and paste, and more! “Attract 100’s of Buyers with Social Media Video” training program.