As Social Media Marketing continues on its path of world wide growth, becoming integral to mainstream marketing for businesses, more SMEs are gravitating  towards social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to build their brands’ online presence and implement a successful social media strategy.

There are a number of challenges every business that is new to social media marketing may face, as they attempt to navigate these choppy social media waters with the goal of mastering its tools. I have highlighted some of the most essential ones below.

1. Failing to Own your  Online Domain
Yes we’ve jumped in feet first. Setting up our profiles in Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and quite a few other communities, we proceed full speed ahead amassing friends and followers with the belief  that these social networks are the cornerstone of our online presence.  We’ve just made our first mistake by failing to realize the importance of having a domain home, whether it is a blog or website. It is fundamental to  be able to direct potential customers to an online home where they can connect with you and learn a little more about your service or product.

Furthermore a  third party site leaves your company  at the mercy of the powers that be. As the third party provider can suspend or cancel your account without warning for suspected or perceived abuse of their ‘Terms of Service’, thus rendering months or years of hard work useless. Such was the case last week when a page with 47000+ fans was disabled because Facebook believed that it was in violation of their terms of service. This matter has since been resolved and you can read the details here.

Yes we should have outposts in these networks because this is where our potential customers socialize, but always ensure that your branded website or blog remain the cornerstone of your business…always directing your customers back to your Company’s online home.

2. Not Differentiating between Quality and Quantity
You’ve joined Twitter and you’re unsure of the following etiquette; should you automatically follow everyone who follows you?

After all you see other colleagues in your field with hundreds of thousands of followers, obviously they must be pretty influential and that’s your objective as well. Quantity is not always synonymous with quality. I think we can all agree that it’s better business to have 500 fans or followers who are interested in your product or service, engage with you and therefore more likely to become customers than 10, 000 fans or followers who never read your tweets or status updates and never have any intention of using your service.

Always remember ‘Quality Trumps Quantity’.

3. Using too many Tools
As with anything there is a learning curve for social media and its tools.

Attempting to use too many tools when one is new can result in confusion and poor performance. Feeling overwhelmed and not experiencing  the returns expected can  subsequently result in disillusionment and abandonment of the systems. Decide on which tools are most important to your business, then master or at least become extremely comfortable with them before proceeding.

It would be more rewarding to take on a lighter load instead of overwhelming yourself in the early stages.

4. No Privacy in the World Wide Web
We’ve all heard the horror stories of someone who has said or done something on Facebook, which they should not have, and got caught. Maybe you even have a friend whose status updates make you shake your head in wonder at their audacity…I know I do. We must all be cognisant of  the fact that there is no such thing as privacy when it comes to the world wide web. Therefore be careful of the content you post whether it be status updates, photos or blog posts and further more be aware of the fact that the web is viral in nature and nothing spreads faster than the piece of news  you wish you had never said or did.

My advice never post anything which you are uncomfortable with the whole world seeing.

5. Too Much Self-Promotion
I’m sure you have seen that person in your twitter feed who posts 20 links daily directing traffic to his product or service, or that brand on Facebook which uses their page as a medium to only pull in their blog posts. All of the conversation is one-way. Would you want to be  friends with someone who talks only about him/herself 24hours a day 365 days a year? After a while it will become unbelievably boring and dare I say annoying. Its the same with social networking sites and invariably  people will stop following you if all you do is try to sell them your product or service.

6. Failing to Manage your Expectations
Thinking that Social Media will be the panacea for all your business issues? Yep, we’ll set up a couple of social media outposts and Bam!! the dollars will start flowing in, you might be thinking. As with all business efforts not only does it takes time but also quite a bit of effort to make an impact. Be mindful that you need to be consistent and in it for the long haul.

7. Automation and More Automation
Of course automation has its place but like anything, too much is never a good thing. Persons may use tools to update status in multiple networks not taking into consideration that each community is different and requires that your messaging reflects this. The content and frequency of messages will differ across platforms hence automation may not always be the solution.

Have you been guilty of any of the above? What other challenges have you overcome in the social media learning process?