Social Media Mistake #2: Live and Let Die

photo credit: beatles maniac11 - If you're going to be bigger than Jesus, you better be ready to put some serious effort into it.

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

The following is part 2 in our series about social media mistakes. To refresh yourself on the previous topic, see this link:

Mistake #1: Being a guru

A common consequence of Mistake #1 is that after signing up on 30 different social media sites and bombarding your email inbox full of automatic friend requests from deceased presidents and adult film stars, you quickly realize that you have no idea how to keep all of your accounts up to date and relevant with fresh content. So, what happens next? Your social media endeavors quickly fall to the wayside because you can’t keep up with the workload.

While it is relatively easy to set up a Facebook account or a LinkedIn profile, it’s not so easy to keep up from a business perspective. It’s good to have goals for social media but keep it in the back of your mind that there’s a long road ahead to achieve your destination and it takes a lot of focus and commitment to get there. Proper planning and budgeting is key to this process.

If you’ve budgeted 1 hour per week to keep 10 accounts up to date, I can tell you right now that there will be a lot of tumbleweed rolling through with most of them. You’ve gone and established all these great relationships and then suddenly disappeared in some seemingly fly by night operation. It’s kind of like showing up to a meet and greet with all of your clients, only to pass out from eating too much spinach dip. People are going to notice you lying unconscious on their living room floor, and they will notice pretty quick that your Twitter feed has gone from hourly posts, to daily posts,  to weekly, monthly and eventually into oblivion.

If you close up shop for months at a time then there’s not much chance for you to bring in any business. Social media is the same. Make sure you aren’t biting off more than you can chew and work at providing sufficient updates so that your followers know that you’re still alive.

Now that we’ve established that you do indeed have the hunger to pursue social media to the fullest, next week we’ll look at how to carry out your objectives professionally without having it run into the ground.