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Former Member
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Before I dig into what I think is the biggest mistake marketers make in regards to social media, I want to set the stage for what I hope will be a  conversation starter.  First off, this isn’t an article written by a  non-marketer condemning the use of social media for marketing.  I have been  in marketing my whole  career and strongly believe that marketing has a place within social media  when done correctly.  Finally, this is not meant to act as a finger  pointing exercise or be a blanket statement directed at all marketers.  This is merely an observation and I hope to see/read your thoughts in the  comment section below.

With millions of individuals using social media everyday to create/share  content and participate in real-time conversations it’s no wonder why marketers  are drawn to social media.  However, there is something about social media  that causes marketers to ignore the basic marketing principles that they learned  in school and throughout their career.  Marketing is marketing regardless  of the channel and it requires you go through all of the proper steps to  increase your chances for success.

  1. Identify your business objectives
  2. Conduct your market research (understand your target audience)
  3. Create your marketing strategy
  4. Implement your marketing tactics
  5. Record / Measure / Report on results
  6. Optimize your marketing tactics (remember to keep testing)

So with this in mind, the biggest mistake marketers make in regards to social  media is a failure to monitor/ listen as monitoring should be at the heart of  all your marketing activities.  There are several use cases for social  media monitoring / listening and the majority of them can be groups into the  following buckets.

  1. Always on: this is great for reducing your risk by setting  up alerts surrounding your brand, identifying major themes in the conversations  surrounding your brand and its competitors, identifying influencers, brand  advocates or detractors and potential prospects, and identifying where these  conversations take place (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc).    The goal should be creating reports that track metric such as share of voice,  sentiment, etc.
  2. Limited duration: this allows you to tap into the real-time  conversations occurring during events or product / campaign launches.  The  goal is to crowdsource and engage with your audience all while measuring the  reach, amplification and impact of your messaging.
  3. Research: this focuses on finding the conversations  specific to your industry and target audience.  The goal is provide  insights into the topics that matter most to your audience, the language they  use when communicating with each other, the communities they participate in and  the major influencers.
  4. Engagement: this is a no-brainer as it is impossible to  have meaningful conversations with someone without listening to their needs and  pain points.  Social media marketing requires interactions and this cannot  be achieve through one-sided messaging.  The goal is create fully  integrated campaigns that create positive interactions with your target  audience.

What do you think is the biggest mistake that marketers make in regards to  social media?  Is your company actively monitoring social media  conversations and if so what tools and resources are you using?