13 Excuses for social media not working…

Good Evening, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today I’m going to help you if you need a reason as to why your social media strategy isn’t working….  Maybe you feel it should be, and so want to justify why it isn’t, or maybe your boss is demanding to know why is everyone else getting results but not you.  Of course it isn’t your fault (or is it?) it could be,

1. I just don’t have time, far too busy “working”
2. I’ve set up a Facebook page and have written interesting posts, but fan numbers haven’t grown in weeks, so OBVIOUSLY it doesn’t work for my industry
3. It’s just a fad, it will only last a few months, it’s just not worth the effort for a few months
4. None of our customers/potential customers are on social media
5. My friend tried it for his business, it did nothing, so there is no point in me trying
6. It’s a USA (insert a country other than yours here) thing, people in (insert your country here) don’t use it
7. I have no idea what to do – too hard basket
8. It’s going to take so long to learn to do it, I’d be better off spending the time on generating sales
9. Just because I have a Facebook page doesn’t mean it will increase sales
10. Only geeks use Twitter
11. People in my industry are still struggling to use Google they just don’t understand social media
12. I just don’t see the point, who wants to know about what we do?  I don’t think they would be interested
13. We are already advertising in magazines and it works fine, so why change it?

 So why do you think it’s not working?  Let me put this out there… Maybe you aren’t giving it a proper go?  YOU CAN GET RESULTS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA – DON”T DISMISS IT….

Bouncing up and down to do more?  Become a Social Rabbit fan at www.facebook.com/SocialRabbit

Accepting who you are…

Good Evening, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

In the world of social media, it is often hard to find norms to compare yourself to, so that you can see how you are doing (believe me, I’ve been searching for stats on defanning on pages for ages!) This is usually due to the lack of information available at the small end of town, where probably most of the readers of this blog live. The small end of town is not a bad place to be, but it is sometimes a disappointing place to be.

Disappointing because you start your Facebook fan page and get 200 fans, think you are doing well (which you are, as according to Facebook only 65% of pages have over 100 fans), but then you get stuck. You have set your sights on getting 10,000 fans (despite the fact that you are a small business, who has probably never even had 10,000 customers interested), just because you look at other pages which have 100,000s of fans and think well if they have that many, surely I can reach 10,000.  Afterall, there is a page devoted to jelly tots with 530,000 fans, surely your business is more interesting than that?

Without sounding preachy (as this Rabbit doesn’t like preachy), you need to understand that Facebook, or any other social medium is not about interesting all the time, it’s about expressing your individuality and personality.  Otherwise how did the “I ❤ sleep” page get 4.7 million fans or this page “i don’t sleep enough because I stay up for no reason” have 3.5 million fans?

Just think about these questions…

• What can I do on my page to stand out from the other 1.6million pages out there? (that’s not that many really, 5% have less than 10 fans)
• Why are people fans of my page? Does it say something about them? Are they there for freebees?  Do they love my articles?  Is it the quirky posts?  You know you can ask your fans this, you don’t need to guess 🙂
• Do I actually engage my fans? (as in do they respond to my posts)  If not how can I?

The new(ish) world of social media can be a real leveler between large and small business, but remember comparing your fan page on a one hit wonder singer to Michael Jackson is just not an even comparison.  Nor is comparing your hairdressing salon with Tony and Guy, you wouldn’t in the offline world, so don’t in the online.  You need to be realistic, that doesn’t mean you can’t aim for 10,000 fans, but just don’t get upset if if takes you a while.  However if you do happen to find out that big brand has less fans than you, then dance up and down and rejoice, as obviously they are not down with social media and you SO are!