Never assume that just because a person or business’ follower numbers are high or low on social media, that this will dictate the success of leveraging that follower group. The opposite can be just as true...

How many clicks do you think a Twitter user that has over 114K followers gets for a link he is sharing? You are thinking about a few hundred at least, right? Well, we are sorry to break it to you, but even though he is on the Forbes Top 50 Social Media Influencers list, this guy gets an average of 7 clicks per shared link.

So, what is happening? Why are the social media gurus failing at social media and how can you protect your company from going on the same path? The most prevalent reason for having no results in social media, no matter if those results are clicks, newsletter subscriptions or sales, are related to buying followers and using poorly built automation software for publishing content on social media networks.

The people who are focusing on growing an audience on social media by following thousands of other users and posting a tweet at every 5 minutes are chasing success forgetting that it is social, not anti-social media. When someone is paying for new social media followers (Twitter users or Facebook fans), the bought accounts are fake ones, no real people are using them.  If there is no one to see what you are posting, how could you possibly generate conversions?

The key to protecting your company from social media failure is getting back to the basics. According to a study conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Lithium, 80% of consumers tried out new things based on friends’ suggestions. Over 70% of them encouraged their friends to try a product or service.

How to be successful in social media

To really be successful in social media it means to be able to create meaningful relations, like the ones between friends. If you’re using an automated service to post content to your social media channels, without listening to what your customers are saying, what they joke about and how they feel, you shouldn’t be in social media at all, because you’re doing it wrong.

When you start a business, every small investment counts. And so does every single effort you’re making. Social media allows you to trade a part of your time to helping and understanding others and transforming them into your loyal clients and promoters. And you’ll say that you don’t have time
for that, and you’re right. Luckily you can get a social media manager to help, one who helped businesses before by building strong and loyal communities around the products or services they sold.

What this social media manager you should be looking for does is to plan, implement and support social media marketing initiatives towards meeting your business and commercialization goals. This person should work closely with your entire team in handling daily requests, and complaints from customers, while managing the overall activity of your social media assets and be responsible for the reach, engagement and sentiment output of those channels. 

What is truly great about this hyper-connected world we’re living in is that you can now afford to hire one of the best social media managers available on the market. And it will cost you only 30% of what you’re thinking it will cost you via outsourcing.

If it’s not expensive to do it right, why do it wrong?