Stop Making These Social Media Mistakes

Post by Blog Manager Robbi Hess

You’re sitting down to blog or update your social media or join a new social media platform and all is right in the pet blogging world, right? Maybe not. It all depends on whether you’re making any of these social media mistakes that follow.

Even if you are making these mistakes, there’s no reason you can’t step back, regroup and then move forward with your pet blogging and social media efforts. Okay, onto the mistakes:

1. Meandering. If you don’t have a plan, you and your blogging and social media efforts will wander blithely along with no end point in sight. Just as your dog will pull you in various directions when you’re on a walk (based on the scents she catches in the breeze) so too will your social media efforts be pulled in various — and sometimes not helpful — directions if you haven’t made a plan.
2. You’re everywhere. “You just have to try XYZ new social media page/platform, etc.” If you “just have to” be everywhere, chances are you won’t be effective anywhere. You need to know where your audience gathers and concentrate your efforts in that place. It doesn’t make sense to sign up for every new social media platform/group and then do nothing with it — a potential client or follower might see your inactive page and assume you’re no longer pet blogging and never search any further. Decide where it makes the most sense and then work your social media magic there. How do you know where to be? It will have been part of your pet blogging business plan when you analyzed the competition.
3. You’re not making time. If you want to be a successful pet blogger — whatever success looks like to you — you need to commit adequate time aka resources to the endeavor. If you’re committing to be a blogger or social media maven, you need to truly commit and make it part of your daily routine. You can’t be a success if you don’t have the time to make it happen. How much time do you have available in your day/week to commit to your social media efforts? Find that time, block it out and work your social media plan.
4. You are constantly using a “buy me” model of communication. Yes, your followers know you provide social media services BUT you don’t need to have every social media post be, “If you want help with your social media, call me!” What you want to offer is good information on or about social media. Let your followers know you are THE expert so when they need help with their social media they WILL call you because you’ve been providing them great information and they have come to “know, like and trust” you. One word of caution, though… you can occasionally ask for business just don’t do it continuously.
5. You throw in the towel too quickly. Social media and a pet blogging business take time. Unless you have some super viral video that makes you go number one on all Google searches, you have to be patient and grow your social media. It may take time, but if you give it a shot for only a week or two and then quit, you have done yourself a disservice. By the same token, though, you need to have an idea in your mind of what success looks like to you and your pet business. If you don’t have numbers or monetary amounts written down, you won’t know when you’ve achieved success. Also, if you’re on the wrong social media platforms or are spread too thin, you may not see success… again, that is the reason you need to take the time to write, and follow, a business plan or find a colleague to work with who can be your sounding board; an outsider may open your eyes to possibilities you hadn’t considered before.

Are you making any social media mistakes? Are you not even sure if you’re making mistakes? If you have any questions, doubts, concerns let me know!

(Photo Shutterstock Bird with megaphone)