THE ONLINE STRATEGIST

As any true expert will confirm, social media marketing (SMM) campaigns require a lot of courage, know-how and determination. Even with these necessary virtues, their success is never guaranteed. I am currently involved in a sizeable, six-month SMM campaign for an expanding fashion business and would love to share the 10 most important ‘don’t's you ought to consider before venturing into what for many businesses – and, if we are honest, digital agencies - is still uncharted territory.

1. Don’t start without objectives. Make sure you put pen to paper before the start of the initiative and substantiate a realistic yet achievable goal list.

2. Don’t ignore the importance of training. When running a campaign for somebody other than yourself, it is imperative to conduct organization-wide training for the success of the project, as I have argued elsewhere .

3. Don’t underestimate the amount of time and effort involved. So many people out there believe that the social media are ‘free’. While it is true that the various applications are often free to sign up to, the social media are time and labour intensive and demanding. And time, as we all know, is money.

4. Don’t press ahead before all your bases are covered. Before engaging in SMM, it is important that your online presence and online strategy are firmly set in place. You don’t want to be referring people to a webpage that is poorly designed and reflects badly on the business or individual in question.

5. Don’t work without SEO support. SEO and SMM must work hand in hand to ensure that you make an impact in the search engines. This is particularly important now that applications like Twitter are being ‘googled’.

6. Don’t delegate unless absolutely necessary. You may be vey knowledgeable in engaging the conversation, but the sad fact is that many people aren’t. I have learnt from painful experience that the wrong person can cause a lot of damage to an otherwise well-run campaign. Only delegate to individuals that have received appropriate training.

7. Don’t engage the competition. Going on the attack in the social media can backfire and get you into a lot of trouble sooner than you think. Just leave your competitors alone and concetrate on your assets.

8. Don’t oveburden your audience. An information overload or a hard-sell approach are big ‘no, no’s here. Make sure you post at regular intervals without saturating your audiences.

9. Don’t forget flexibility is not weakness. Stay flexible along the way. Some approaches may not work for specific niche audiences or cultures. Be ready to change course when necessary and make sure that your flexibility is not misunderstood.

10. Don’t stop until your objectives are reached! Persistence and steadfastness pay. While it would be wonderful to ‘go viral’ in the early stages, you often need to reach critical mass before your efforts pay off.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions in the comments section and wish you great success in your social media engagement.