B2B Social Media: 4 Ways to Screw Up your Social Media Efforts

There is no doubt that B2B social media participation is growing at a rapid rate, but with this growth comes additional scrutiny. The nature of social media allows for corporate participation in social conversations and interaction with consumers at the click of a mouse.

While social media is great for driving website traffic and rounding out your online marketing strategy, you can do things that are guaranteed to alienate your follower base. Here are 4 ways to screw up your social media efforts: 

1) Be inconsistent: What does that mean? Tweet once and then never tweet again, or worse yet–establish a group on LinkedIn, invite all of your contacts and never update it. Social media is all about owning and maintaining your presence in the online space so be sure to do it in a meaningful way on a recurring basis.

2) Be overbearing: 
If you invited users to your Facebook group more than once, you are overdoing it! The beauty of social media is that your audience/follower base is always growing so you don’t need to harass the same group of people in order to force growth. If you are providing meaningful content and information to your audience, your group will grow organically. And–if you do feel you want to boost growth with an invitation, be sure to send it only once! There is nothing worse than a desperate invitation.

3) Be selfish: There are many reasons to establish a social presence, but one is to share the most relevant information with your audience/followers. There are few exceptions (if you are Apple, you really don’t need to share information on anything but…well, Apple!), but we should all be conscious of acting selfish with our updates. Be sure to pass along relevant links that don’t drive traffic directly to your website. Your followers will appreciate the varied information and won’t feel like they are inundated with content relating to only YOU.

4) Be childish: 
In the online space, you can find review sites that cater to nearly any business. Whether you are a storefront or a venture capital firm, you can rate a site and review the services you provide. Being childish in your responses to a negative review is a really easy way to lose your credibility. Sure, negative reviews can make us upset, but a reckless and emotional response will do more damage to your reputation in the long run than that one negative review. Instead, use these reviews to better your company at every turn and respond graciously to negative feedback. 

Be good social citizens and avoid these pitfalls!