5 Dumbest Social Media Mistakes Businesses Make Every Day

1. The no strategy mistake. Some dumb idiots shoot out posts and Tweets without having commercial goals, without segmenting their market, and without understanding the buying process for what they sell.

2. The same dumb idiots don't invest in good content. Your content strategy will be as thin as air if you don't invest in it.

3.  Dumb idiots aren't unique, either. People with imagination and great writing skills, who can write different, new posts, are needed, badly. If you can write a  stunning post, do it. If you can't, please don't bore us with faded copies of the worst post we read in 2010.

4. Those same dumb idiots don't get social. At all. For God's sake, there's no point in having a Twitter feed and Facebook page if you don't respond to people who contact you that way. 7 days a week too. Wake up. M-F 9 to 5 will die. Your customers are online 24/7. Can you not at least be there 12/24?

5. And they don't ask customers anything and don't adapt to their needs. If you are targeting a group, get their views, find out what they want, and deliver it. How hard is that? You should know what's trending in each segment, and what value you can deliver for free, too.

Don't expect miracles, either and don't get conned into promising them, This stuff works, but it's based on building a reputation, delivering value, and nurturing the leads you accumulate through your email and blog sign up systems. With that in mind, please use the button on the right to follow us.

There's lots more posts like this coming. Stay tuned.

Supercharging social media with storytelling techniques: Raising the Stakes

Raising the stakes is a classic technique for raising interest in a story. If you make things important for the characters, make it a life or death situation or, more realistically, make what will happen have an impact on people lives, then more people will be interested in your writing.

But can we use this technique in social media?

Yes, we can. We are not all involved in saving lives or ground breaking research, but you can find ways to raise the stakes in everyday situations too. Here are some examples:

1. If you're a cake company you can post/Tweet about an anonymous client who bought a cake for a birthday celebration with a new boyfriend.

2. If you sell wine you can post/Tweet about the anonymous client who bought 20 bottles, which you recommended, for the engagement party of his only daughter.

3. If you're a bank, you can post/Tweet about an anonymous and unidentifiable client who was helped expand by a loan to cover an order for a new client, which was negotiated in 48hrs.

4. If you're an artist you can post/Tweet about how you try to capture beauty or reality in each painting you create.

5. If you're a shoe designer you can post/Tweet about how your shoes make your customers feel confident and gorgeous.

In each case the stakes are about more important things than the world is about to end, they are about our family, our business, our urge to create, and the importance of feeling confident.