Social Media Mistake #4: Who Needs Metrics?

photo credit: TheeErin - With the Ronco Rotisserie you can set it and forget it. With social media... not so much.

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

The following is part 4 of 5 in our series about social media mistakes. To refresh yourself on the previous topics, see these links:

Mistake #1: Being a Guru
Mistake #2: Live and Let Die
Mistake #3: Policy Shmolicy

Unless you’re operating a do-it-yourself car wash that allows you to show up and empty the coin box once a week, it’s pretty likely that your day to day customer relationships are kept up by people and not by the PowerScrubber 5000. In addition to the people you have working behind the scenes, this also makes your business itself a living, breathing entity. It’s constantly growing and expanding and consistently reaching out to new avenues and always focusing on how to improve things.

The web in general operates much the same way. If someone came into your office or shop looking for a specific item or perhaps simply some general information, you would obviously put forth your best effort to make sure that they get it. You wouldn’t tell them to take a hike, would you? Your website and your social media efforts should do the same thing. If you aren’t getting the results that you had anticipated, then try something new.

Of course, it all starts with planning, and by planning I don’t mean sitting around a boardroom table and having this conversation with your staff:

OWNER: “I just watched this hilarious video on YouTube where a guy put a sock full of nickels in a blender.”

*Shows the video… everyone has a good laugh*

OWNER: “You know this guy is a millionaire now because of this video? We need to get on this gravy train. So how do we do it?”

EXEC: “Well it’s pretty simple really… YouTube + Our Company = $$$”

OWNER: “Genius! Works for me. Let’s do it.”

Take the time to research your demographics, find out what people want and expect from your business and budget for it. After you’ve had a few trial runs with YouTube or Facebook, or whatever social media platform you choose, return to your results and study them again. Find out what is working and what isn’t and make adjustments based on your findings. For example, perhaps your business is selling hearing aids to the elderly. Chances are there won’t be many 65+ seniors Tweeting to the masses about the awesomeness of your product… however there are many seniors who actively browse about Facebook daily. Knowing where to focus the majority of your efforts will set the footings to allow you to make the biggest impact possible without just randomly throwing darts at a wall.

Oh, and in case you thought I was kidding about the Blender guy, he’s real. Here he is testing out a brand spankin’ new iPad.

[youtube]lAl28d6tbko[/youtube]

Next week is the final chapter in our social media mistakes series talking about what kinds of results you can realistically expect from social media.