There’s something tricky and treacherous about sites like Twitter and Facebook that lurks beneath all of those updates. Taking control of any social media account can seem unreal. After all, you are just typing words into small spaces. Who do these words really impact? Who really cares what you are writing? More often than not, your target audience does.
Hiring someone to run a social media campaign can, let’s be honest here, seem like a big waste of money. How tough can it really be to send out tweets and update a Facebook page? Well, that depends on how much you want to isolate, alienate, and effectively eliminate potential and current customers.
Posting updates as the face of a company is not like posting photos of your latest beach vacation. Aside from the many social media mistakes mentioned all across the Internet, there’s an even bigger mistake that I’ve repeatedly watched people make. This mistake is called the “over-enthusiastic syndrome.” I’ve seen this ailment at its absolute worst, and it’s far from pretty.
Over-enthusiasm looks, acts, and sounds a lot like begging. Imagine, if you will, an image of a storybook witch, beggar, or other frightening creature. Eyes wrinkled and squinting, back hunched over, twisted walking stick and all. Just as these images frighten the sense out of children, running a social media account cloaked in the guise of a beggar is disastrous.
Over-enthusiasm syndrome comes in the form of too many sales posts, direct messages that insist upon the same theme over and over again, and updates about a new promotion. Sure, it’s important to let your audience know about your latest sale or the new ad space that you want to sell, but when and how to ignite interest is a very tough lesson to learn.
Unfortunately, the social media world is an unforgiving one. Once a mistake has been made, it takes the learned eyes of an expert to fix it. You want someone who’s been around the block on your side. You need someone who can turn a PR disaster into something great. You can’t afford to hand your social media campaign to a person with no experience, your intern, or yourself.
If you’re tempted to run your own social media campaign, think twice before you type those 140 characters. You could wind up with over-enthusiastic syndrome – a hard illness to shake.
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