7 Incredibly Rare Mistakes in Social Media Marketing

There are literally thousands of blog posts, slideshares, eBooks and articles called, “The 24 Most Common Mistakes in Social Media Marketing”.  But no one ever bothers to list the really rare mistakes in social media marketing — the ones almost nobody ever seems to make.

Well, at Velocity, we pride ourselves in never letting a gap in the market go un-spackled.  When the world zigs, we kind of amble off in no particular direction.  When the world says ‘Jump’ we get all mournful and introspective.  So here goes, our contrarian cure for social media ennui (with no offense intended to… anyone really.  We’re teasing ourselves here, too):

The 7 Incredibly Rare Mistakes in Social Media Marketing

1. Forgetting to link to your most recent marketing bumf
This almost never happens so don’t worry too much about it.  Occasionally, someone forgets to link to their most recent blog post or ebook but not very often. Most social media sites have essentially become Pimp Central Station so there’s little danger in finding yourself reading a post or tweet or comment that does not exhibit a not-so-hidden agenda with added SEO value. Nature of the beast.

2. Joining a LinkedIn group that has absolutely nothing to do with you and probably never will.
People are always joining groups that are relevant to their work or their life. It’s very uncommon to find people joining groups like ‘Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Professionals’ when they’re not a heating, ventilation and air conditioning professional and have no plans to do all the things you’d pretty much have to do to become a heating, ventilation and air conditioning professional.  Not a common mistake but a total waste of time, when you think about it, so worth continuing to avoid.

3. Retweeting tweets that are in languages you don’t even speak.
This whole RT thing is great but if you find yourself re-tweeting what looks like a 140-character review of Avatar in Tagalog, it’s probably time to strap on the quality filter.  Just a rule of thumb.

4. Forgetting the password to your Twitter account
It’s 12345 and it’s written on that post-it note on your monitor. No wonder this mistake is so rare.

5. Forgetting that your ten thousand ‘followers’ on Twitter aren’t really following you at all.
They just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. They aren’t sitting around gazing at their TweetDeck, waiting for your next micro-insight.  There is no budding Cult of You and you are unlikely to retire to a 90-acre retreat in Texas surrounded by your rapt and adoring ‘followers’ who will do anything you say even if it’s patently ridiculous or sexually inappropriate.  But you knew that.

6. Deciding not to post the first thing that comes into your head just because you haven’t posted in a while.
If you’re starting to suspect that every little proto-thought that skitters across the shiny surface of your consciousness may, after all, turn out NOT be of immediate and immeasurable value to the world, stop right there.  That’s a fundamental breach of the Social Media Ethos and it’s generally frowned upon using one of those punctuation-based emoticons (and not the ones with the semi-colon wink either. I’m talking full-strength emoticons.)

7. Writing ‘social media friendly’ blog posts that don’t have a number in the title.
I can’t imagine this ever happening but one day it just might, so we thought we’d warn you about it.  Our recent post, 7 Tips for Writing Number-based Headlines, gives you a quick how-to.

There you go. Go forth and continue to refrain from committing these exceedingly rare mistakes.

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Photo Credit: Roger van Oech, CreativeThink