I see a lot of mistakes in social media every day, so narrowing down this list to five was tough. However, I reserve the right to do a second post on this in the future. These are not my social media pet peeves, but rather, “Who told you that this was a good idea?” faux pas that just make social media consultants cringe or shake our heads side to side. Here are my top five social media mistakes to avoid:

1. QR Codes on email signatures.  I don’t know who told people that this was a good idea but it’s not. I’ll admit that I’m not keen on QR codes on business cards either – unless of course they are going to give me some real insight to your business (like with a video) or a freebie or some sort. Otherwise, please reserve them for retail businesses, flyers, postcards and magazines. Because no one, and I mean NO ONE is going to view your QR code in your email address on their computer and whip out their iPhone or Android to scan it. NO ONE. And since most people consume content on their mobile phones, that’s a tad tricky to do.
2. Twitter/Facebook icons on commercials. So many times I see companies list at the end of their commercial to find them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter – but there is no short link. Have you ever tried to look up a company on Facebook and not found them right away because there are other companies that have similar names? It should be easy, right? But the problem is that Facebook and Twitter let you choose your own handle and many companies have been forced to abbreviate their company names to  just get a presence on Twitter/Facebook. Make it easy for people to connect with your brand.
3. Facebook icon/Twitter icons on websites or in newsletters that don’t have hyperlinks. If you are going to take the time to put a social media icon on your website or in your newsletter and you don’t know how to hyperlink it to your specific page then I suggest you go ask someone before you do such a thing. Enough said.
4. Real Estate agents tweeting their listings. Aghhhhh! Who told you that was a good idea? Has that actually resulted in sales? No really, if it has, I want you to personally contact me with your success story. Broadcasting “listings” to people constantly on your feed is similar to sounding like a General barking orders in the Army through a bull horn.
5. Forgetting to tag people and brands in posts. You have a Fan page or a Google+ brand page and you mention others or other brands in your post and you don’t tag. This is a missed opportunity. One, it gets them to notice you and you may gain a follower. Or better, it appears in their news feed or in their stream and others find it valuable and follow you. Especially do this when you are sharing content from another site. It’s courteous and the favor may be returned.

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Based on a couple of hundred responses from communicators, PR and marketing types from about a dozen LinkedIn groups, here are the 20 most hated business buzzphrases:

1. At the end of the day*
2. Social media expert
3. It is what it is*
4. Reach out*
5. Metrics
6. Moving / going forward*
7. Solutions / solutioning*
8. Out of the box thinking*
9. Paradigm shift
10. Right-sizing
11. Icon/iconic
12. Visionary
13. View from X-thousand feet
14. State-of-the-art
15. Best practices
16. Engagement*
17. Leverage* (as a verb)
18. Any synthetic verb made by adding -ize to a noun – such as calendarize
19. Seamless
20. Integrate

Those marked with an * were also on 2010’s top 20 list (http://bit.ly/h3Axzj ).

 Thanks to all who participated!

Is your most-hated business buzzword included? Do you have any additions?

The situation isn’t very different in the business environment; people make grave errors that do cost businesses money, customers and their reputation. Over the last four weeks I have observed as these type of situations played out on cyberspace.  Here are two situations with crucial lessons for anyone using social media for business.

Situation 1: The unhappy Zuku customer

Zuku is Wananchi Online’s flagship brand providing triple-play services to the East African market.  On their web site, they pride themselves as an “East African brand that aspires to bring our customer superior entertainment experience at an affordable price”.  From testimonials of a number of Zuku customers, at least their internet connectivity meets this description.  The TV offering is an arguable point and I don’t know much about their voice service.  On 2^nd November 2011 one of their customers was not having a good day with Zuku and put up the tweet below.

The customer, @carolmusyoka used Twitter to get not only Zuku’s attention but that of other customers and potential customers to highlight the experience she was having dealing with the brand. In a short span of time, a number of other Zuku customers pitched in with their thoughts on Zuku’s customers service (or lack of it).  From a safe distance it appears Zuku eventually made contact with their customer on phone but remained mum on Twitter where they actually have a presence @Zukufan.  This was a major error on their part given the attention their brand was raising on Twitter, the sentiment of which was mostly negative.  By 4^th November, @carolmusyoka was still waiting for a solution and more Twitter users were weighing in with their thoughts and experiences. From the barrage of tweets, one user shared this link from another Zuku customer who was quite blunt about both their TV service and their “customer disservice” as he called it.  The issue dragged on for a few days with the Twitter timeline with #Zuku references reading like a script from a horror-comedy screenplay.  A week after this saga began the tweet below was put up.

Zuku decided to take leave instead of taking action and responsibility on the platform where their brand was suffering the most! Right there, they provided the latest case study in “how not to run your social media marketing”.  They eventually reactivated their twitter account and have recently been on a following spree but questions still abound on whether they are using the channel better to keep their customers informed and happy.  The @ZukuFan handle is protected, meaning that they screen those wishing to follow them and those who read their tweets. That feature wasn’t meant for any serious enterprise.  Reminds me of a Bible story where some people were asked if they would light a lamp and keep it covered. If your business is on social media you are there to be seen and heard by as many people as will be available to listen.

Situation 2: The failed airline promotion

Australia’s largest airline and flag-carrier Qantas, is no stranger to social media.  The airline has built a reputation over its 91 years of existence.  On 22^nd November 2011 the Qantas marketing team launched a Twitter campaign where the winning tweet would be rewarded with a Qantas first-class gift pack.  The @QantasAirways account has over 68,000 followers and as such, running a campaign using this channel was bound to get some good conversation going. 

The background to this however is that the airline had been grappling with negative publicity following disputes with three unions that led to the eventual grounding of the airline’s fleet on 29^th October 2011.  Before fully resolving the customer dissatisfaction issue as a result of this, the company launched a campaign to try and engage it’s customers more on social media.  With the hashtag #QantasLuxury, customers were to respond to this question: “Tell us ‘What is your dream luxury inflight experience?’ #QantasLuxury”

The good:  Within an hour, the #QantasLuxury was trending across Australia.  A social media expert, James Griffin of SR7 said there were on average 51 tweets per minute on the topic.

The Bad & the Ugly: Fresh from having thousands of disappointed customers following the grounding of the fleet, the tweets were not flattering and had nothing to do with the intended campaign.  This became an ideal outlet for the airline’s customers to vent their frustrations.  Here are a few of the tweets:

“#qantasluxury is chartering a Greyhound bus and arriving at your destination days before your grounded Qantas flight”

“#QantasLuxury- When the passengers arrive before the couriers delivering the lockout notices do”.

“Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire. #Qantasluxury”.

While there was nothing wrong with the campaign itself, what the airlines marketing team totally got wrong was the timing.  They were insensitive to the issues many of their customers were still dealing with following the industrial disputes leading to the fleet grounding.

In March 2010, Nestle foods hit the news with one of the classic goofs that played out on Facebook following the actions of GreenPeace, an environmental lobby group.  You can read more about it here.

While these examples may represent some extreme situations, making mistakes on social media doesn’t mean an end to a brands engagement online.  If and when they do happen, the brand needs to ensure that it remains focussed on meeting customer expectations and directly addressing the issue.  Diverting the attention of Fans and followers will only aggravate them.  And obviously, so will deactivating your account or profile. 

These types of mistakes can be avoided by having a clear strategy and policy for your business on how to run your affairs online.  In the policy, there will be clear guidelines on a number of important issues such as:

• ·         who the authorised spokespeople are
• ·         the average lead-times to respond to customer queries
• ·         transition and handover procedures in case the site administrator changes roles or leaves the company
• ·         how to manage spammers and inappropriate content that external parties put on your social media channels

In the situation where you find yourself in a reactive situation, employ all reasonable principles that you would if the mistake had happened with a customer in your office, while remembering that there are hundreds or thousands of other customers watching closely.  Here is another interesting perspective on how to proactively use social media especially for the airline industry for crisis management.

The bottom-line here is that social media will not fix other broken elements of the business.  Every business will be challenged with some aspect or the other relating to their products or their customers but this shouldn’t also be an excuse not to engage in social media.

Social media marketing isn’t a band-aid for a broken business; it’s about using it to improve a business that has the basics right.

I thought of putting my thoughts on how to avoid these mistakes. Hence, here are my points on ‘How & When’ not to use Facebook:

• If facebook is your only social media strategy, you must have a backup plan. Take a look at the following data pulled from comScore:

At one point in time, Orkut was the market leader in India. But slowly, popularity of Orkut is waning, thanks to Facebook. Orkut has lost more than 53% of its visitors while FB has gained 68%. I am sure a lot of you either have unsubscribed from Orkut or you still have the ID but don’t use it. This makes my point. What if Facebook is no more tomorrow (not suggesting it is going anywhere). What if Google+ takes over (assumption) or any other site comes up? Users could be very fickle.  You can always shift to new platform if at all the new platform allows it and whenever it allows (G+ has recently opened it for brands). But there is bound to be spillage. Hence, it becomes necessary to revisit the strategy and consider using other social media channels for your brands. You can use FB, Youtube, Twitter etc driving traffic to each other at times.  This helps you to minimize the damage.

• Facebook is not a replacement of a microsite. Many clients have told me that they will not create a site/microsite but rather put an app on FB. I am not saying there is anything wrong in doing this. But one should know what’s one missing in doing so. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to reach users in social media space because of newer security settings. Also, it limits the concept to FB only even if you drive the traffic to FB page, thereby missing out on considerable traffic.  Client’s logic behind this thought is that this will allow more VIRALability. Truth be told, not every concept/campaign goes viral. When was the last time your campaign took the web world by storm? If a concept/campaign is good, it will go viral itself, irrespective of whether it is there on FB, Twitter or on a microsite.

Have you experienced this? Do share!!

- Recognition:  This is the first stage and it requires an organization’s social media team to recognize that there is an issue and that it needs immediate attention. The biggest action that is required is for the organization to acknowledge the issue in the first place and not turn a “blinded eye” away from the issue. The key is to have a sense of urgency and again the first step is to recognize that there is an issue.

- Action (apology):  Once the issue is recognized action needs to take place. The first thing that needs to be done is to publicly acknowledge that there is an issue. This needs to be done as quickly as possible to reduce the amount of negative reaction or comments then necessary. Organizations can create a space specifically to address this issue and make the public announcement of the issue and if necessary apologize. Secondly the organization needs to show that they have learned from the issue. Finally an organization needs to demonstrate the steps that you are taking to correct the issue now and prevent it from occurring in the future. One additional key to this step is to ensure the highest level of transparency that can be achieved. This will also help to regain those that have questioned their loyalty to your organization.

- Learn from your Mistakes and Make Future Plans:  Once the above two steps have been implemented the social media team and organization in general should learn from the mistakes that caused the negative issue occur. The structure of the social media efforts need to be evaluated and make changes as required. The future plans for the organizations social media efforts should include the development of polices and guidelines that need to be followed in both positive and negative points within their social media efforts.

When organizations develop social media into their marketing efforts the goal is to create a stronger relationship with their current and potential customers with the overall goal of increasing the level of success.  While this is the intent there needs to be the acceptance that mistakes will occur.  It is important to take the necessary steps to minimize the negative effects.  What is most important is to quickly recognize the issue by responding quickly, being transparent and demonstrating compassion.  From these important steps organizations will be able grow from these experiences to become more successful in their future social media efforts.

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While using social media can be an effective marketing idea for startup companies on a small budget, executing them isn’t always foolproof. Falling victim to any of the common flubs can end up damaging your business’s reputation and chances for success.

Here are five of the most common social media mistakes and how you can avoid making them.

No. 1: Starting without a plan. 
If you are tempted to skip creating a social media strategic plan for your business that outlines your goals and the resources you’ll need to accomplish them, don’t do it. By developing a plan, you create a critical foundation for which the rest of your social media efforts are based on.

Your first step to creating a strategic plan for your social media operation is to answer the following questions:

a. Do you know who your target audience is?
b. How do you plan to talk to them?
c. Do you know how your social media campaign ties into your traditional marketing plan?
d. Do you know who is going to staff your social media efforts?
e. Do you know your social media business objectives?
f. How will you measure your success?

Answer these questions along with your core team members — your lead sales, marketing and programming people. As you do so, take time to compare them to other social media strategies to help identify and fill gaps. For instance, web strategist Jeremiah Owyang has a frequently-updated list of social media strategies from larger companies.

Once your plan is set, determine who on your staff will be responsible for carrying it out and hold him or her accountable.

No. 2: Poorly timing social media posts. 
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen startups make is not knowing who the customer is and how he or she behaves on the social web. For instance, a report from my marketing analytics firm KISSmetrics shows that nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population who use social media live in the Eastern Time Zone, and more than 30 percent are in the Central Time Zone. The report suggests that tweets posted at about 5 p.m. have the highest chance of being clicked on and shared. So, for example, if your business is on Pacific Time and you tweet at 5 p.m., you’d miss the “sweet spot” of more than 80 percent of the U.S. population.

No. 3: Breaking social media rules of etiquette. 
Don’t start a social media campaign without having at least a basic understanding of some of the rules. Here is a simple list I follow:

• Start conversations by asking thought-provoking questions. Tapping into trends can be a great way to increase engagement among your social followers. You can find these trends on What the Trend or the home pages of general and industry news sites.
• Don’t follow someone on Twitter, then unfollow them when they follow you. The only reason you should follow a person or a brand is because you value the content he or she shares.
• Promote other people as well as your own brand. For every personal social media mention you share, you should mention another person or business five times. When you do self-promote, make it a short mention that focuses on the benefit for your readers.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus on using four networks or fewer at a time. Otherwise, you might not have the time to consistently provide relevant content that engages users.

No. 4: Failing to measure social media success. 
Although it might not be easy to measure something like a conversation, you are able to measure factors such as your total online community size, the number of mentions of your brand across the social web and all the traffic referred to your business’s website. The following tools can help you stay on top these important metrics:

• PageLever is a paid tool that helps you see your impressions for any date range on Facebook.
• Simply Measured is a paid tool that can collect social media data such as engagement per blog post, or tweet distribution per country into an Excel report.
• SocialMention is a free search engine that allows you to have alerts sent to you daily containing mentions made online of you and your brand.

No. 5: Ignoring your competitors. 
Knowing who your competitors are and what they are doing is just as important as knowing everything about your own business.

To keep an eye on your competitors over social media, look at their website, locate the social media icons, sign up as a fan and start watching what they do. It’s just as important to see what their fans are saying and use those reactions to improve your own business. For example:

• Are your competitors’ fans complaining about a missing feature? Can you easily and profitably include that feature into your product?
• Are they praising something both you and your competitor do, but you aren’t actively promoting it in your ads? Maybe you should.
• What emotions do their fans seem to connect with in regard to your competitors’ products? Can you tap into that same emotion?

If you have a strategic plan, and avoid the above mistakes, social media can give your startup a cost-effective marketing boost. Additionally, your plan help remind you why you’re spending time on social networks and how to improve your efforts moving forward.

Last month, 1&1, one of the largest website hosting companies in the world experienced a network outage causing many business websites to go offline. Customers tried to get information about what was going on from but 1&1 network status page had not been updated for weeks. Within minutes, customers began tweeting at the company as well as posting messages on 1&1’s Facebook Fan Page. The company took several hours to post information on their social media channels letting their clients know that they were working on a solution before eventually fixing the problem and be back in business. By then the damage was done, thousand of irate tweets and wall posts were circulating the web.

Their mistake, not harnessing the power of social media, acknowledging there was a problem, keeping their customers informed and up to date, (i.e. providing customers with a great customer service experience).

When you jump into social media, make sure you go all in, not just posting information, but engaging your audience in a dialogue. Don’t have a twitter account if you are not going to monitor what is being said about you or your company. The same goes for Facebook, Google+ and the other social media channels.

I can help you and your business get the most out of social media. Contact me to find out how.

Jose Martinez-Garriga

jmartinegarriga@gmail.com

972-832-6173

I offer many workshops: Grow Your Personal Brand and another on using social media to grow business are the most popular ones. Most attendees are eager to use social media, but almost all have no social media or marketing plan.  They are also overwhelmed in regards to where to start.  Whether you are already using social media, or just getting started, these are some common scary and time wasting mistakes you must avoid:

1) Don’t go in there! – Just like a group of unsuspecting teens who venture into a haunted house, remember you need to have a plan when approaching a social media marketing effort for yourself or your business.  Would Van Helsing go vampire hunting without a plan and wooden stakes for their hearts?  Start your planning with an assessment of what marketing you are doing now; research the social sites where your customers interact; completely set up your sites; link your social media sites, website and blog; and create goals with methods for measuring them (for a copy of my six week social media start up plan e-mail me at wjcorbett@corbettpr.com).

2) Boo! –  Using social media to sell or, even worse hard sell, is a major mistake.  By doing this you will do the exact opposite of two of the major goals you want to accomplish with your social media activities – attract followers and start conversations.  If you try to sell you will scare many people away, probably forever.

3) What was that? –  This is a line often heard in scary movies.  Freaked out teens in an abandoned building are obviously scared, but what are they doing? They are hypersensitive to their environment and listening for danger. In the case of social media everyone needs to listen to customers, competition and other online influencers.   If you do not listen you will never understand your customers, the marketplace or know how to position your business and your messages.   Listen and you will avoid the danger of communicating messages nobody is interested in.

4) Scream – Social media is a two- way street with multiple intersections.  If you stand on the corner and shout your message at passing cars few will hear you and even fewer will care.   Your screaming (touting yourself, your

products or services) will eventually fall on deaf and uninterested ears.   People will listen to you if you speak with them and listen.  Answer their questions and give them a reason to pull over and listen to you.

5) The Swarm – There have been many scary movies about killer bees.  What we learn from these movies is that the saying, “never disturb a bees’ nest” is true.  The same goes for getting involved in cyber wars, arguments or discussions of religion and politics online.   As part of your social media activity you are seeking to show your expertise and build your brand.  Discussing these taboo topics can and will bring unwanted attacks and many negative comments.  This will drive people away and potentially hurt your brand and social media efforts.

6) Rotten Eggs – With Halloween comes mischief and unfortunately some destruction.   Throwing eggs is part of this tradition and is a practice that should be frowned upon by everyone.  Like an unwanted egg, an unwanted direct message or a poorly thought out,  error-filled post is equally undesirable.  Avoid sending direct messages asking for sales or with direct selling offers.   Build relationships before you ask for anything or even attempt to sell something.  The same goes for posting; if there is no purpose to it, don’t do it.  Posts should have interesting content, photos and videos whenever possible.    To build relationships and followers social media users need to be interesting, fun and informative.  You may only have one chance to make a good impression, make sure it’s the right one.

7) Trick – Don’t get tricked by high expectations for social media.  While social media can be very helpful and for some a strong business driver ROI (Return on Investment), for many, especially in the business to business world, this remains elusive.  Create a plan and look at social media as a long term investment in marketing and branding.   If you expect immediate gratification then you really have been tricked.

8) Trick or Treating – Did you ever plan out your trick or treating route when you were a kid?  Did you know the best blocks or houses for getting the most and best kinds of candy?  I bet many of you did.  For social media focus

on activities that work, spend time in communities (groups) where you can enhance your brand and attract followers.  Complete goals before moving on to new ones or developing new strategies.  Track your success with different social media sites and different communities and return to them.  Don’t go back or invest too much time on communities that proved to be more of a trick than a treat.

9) The Black Hole – Whether it’s a portal to another dimension or a black hole in space, it is important to avoid them.  Social media also has its own black hole – the black hole of time.  Social media can be a major time waster for many, like a vampire with a craving to suck blood social media sucks time away. Set specific “time budgets” for social media activities and only add time when you see efforts reap rewards or when they clearly demonstrate they are helping to achieve goals.

10) Your Costume – Have you ever won a costume contest?  Why do people win costume contests? The winners are usually creative, visually interesting, memorable and fun.  Your online image needs to have the same qualities.  Make sure you have a photo of yourself; one that makes you look good.  Spend the extra money to get a professional headshot done.  This image is important; studies show and social media experts report that without a photo people are less likely to connect with you or a business, follow you, comment on your posts or even read or look at what you post.

11) Zombies – What do zombies do?  They roam the earth looking to make a meal out of a live person.  In the social media world we also need to avoid zombies.  Zombies come to us in the way of viruses, spam and those engaged in fraud to get personal financial information.  Thankfully, viruses are less common via a social media but they do happen.  If you receive a direct message that looks strange, from someone you do not know or a message that suggests you check out a video or photo with you in it, delete this right away.  Knowing your enemy is important, but also be prepared.  If you use social media regularly make sure that you change your passwords from time to time, never share information that can be used by others to create accounts, make sure you back up your data remotely and often, and finally be prepared because you eventually will get a virus, malware attack or get hacked.  This is scary to think about.  Make sure your zombie (virus) protection plan is in place and software updated.  Protecting yourself will also help stop the virus from infecting others you are connected with on social media.  Spreading a virus is not a good way to attract friends, fans or followers.

12) Your Halloween Party – Who do you invite to your Halloween party?  Certainly friends, family and people you think will have a good time.  Would you invite people who you know would not wear a costume?  In social media you need to know who you have and who you want to have at your party.  The wrong people at the party could spoil it for everyone.  From people posting inappropriate content on your Facebook wall to LinkedIn “connections” who mine your client base for business, or worse steal your ideas (it’s happened to me), monitoring and carefully analyzing who follows you is important.   Take the time to review your followers on all social media sites; don’t let any questionable people into your community.  This does not mean preventing people you don’t know in, but do your best to vet them and watch what they are saying to members of your community.

13) Treats – A successful Halloween for me when I was young was all about having fun, maybe getting a little scared, collecting some great candy, and engaging in some harmless mischief.  A great costume attracted attention and some extra candy.  In addition, friends and family took photos and remembered the best costumes for years.   Social media can lead to treats or as I like to call them followers, referrals and business.  With a social media plan in place reputation and followers can be built on a growing basis.  By listening to followers and others, conversations can be started.  This will lead to relationships, real world meetings and eventually referrals and the best treat of all business.

Don’t be scared of social media.  For the new user it can be a little frightening but the rewards, both personal and business-related, can be significant.

What scares you about social media?  Let me know.

One of the most rewarding things about engaging in social media is the feedback. It’s satisfying to see people commenting on your blog posts, tweeting you back on Twitter or posting on your Facebook wall.

 But how do you handle things when the most rewarding thing about social media turns negative? Mainly, what do you do when angry, argumentative or disrespectful people engage you online?

Here are a few tips on responding:

• First, it’s important to decide what kind of negative feedback you’re getting. Is it someone spamming nonsense or ads? Is it someone just looking to cause trouble? Or is it someone having a legitimate problem with your product or service?
•  Some negative posters are simply trying to stir up trouble. If you see a negative, unwarranted comment posted about your company or product from someone who doesn’t seem to have an actual basis or true problem, you can actually nip it in the bud by responding – in a polite and positive way. Many trouble-stirrers plan on you not reacting, so by responding in a professional way, you can deter other potential disrespectful posters from commenting.
•  If an error or typo is posted on one of your company’s social media sites, people might rush to point out the error – some in a nicer way than others. If there is a mistake, don’t simply fix it without commenting. Be sure to admit to the mistake and thank those who pointed it out.
•  The same goes for someone offering up constructive criticism, or a poster who seems to have a legitimate issue / trouble with your service or product offering.  It’s important to respond and thank them for their feedback and offer up the opportunity for additional communication offline.
•  The time it’s OK not to respond is when you’re dealing with “spammers” or “trolls.” Spammers are people who post spam material such as ad links or links to other products / websites in your comments section. Trolls are people who take things even further and may post inappropriate language or content in your feedback section.

How have you handled negative feedback on your social media platforms?