4 Bad Habits You Should Stop To Become A More Successful Marketer

It is very easy to slip into bad habits if you are involved in digital marketing. This is because it is such a dynamic and vibrant arena, you can feel like you’re the centre of attention (see our first point below).

These bad habits can also go unchecked because of that dynamism and speed. However, the bad habits we are looking at here are easily dropped.

A digital marketer just needs to know how to focus on staying on the right path. Take a look at the habits and make sure they are not activities you over-indulge in. It could really damage a brand if you do.

Being over self-promotional

This is easy to do. If a brand publishes a news report about their brilliance, this is perfectly acceptable. If they do it ten times a day then it is nothing short of annoying.

However, it is made a lot worse if a brand (or its agency) responds to comments about how brilliant they are all the time. A simple ‘thank you’ is more than enough, and you should be showing that the brand is trying hard to improve for the right reasons, not to achieve flattering responses. It is actually very easy to embark on a spree of self-promotion, and one of the easiest places to do this is in comments.

If you see comments that talk about how amazing the client’s brand is, be gracious and say thank you. Then move onto helping the next customer. When people go through your comments and see that gracious response, they will see you as a brand that simply ‘knows’ its value and is focused on the customer, not themselves.

Posting and not listening

Some brands find it very difficult to listen to customers online. This is usually because they can’t hear themselves think over the noise that occurs as they are posting. It is good advice to post regularly, all the best brands do this. But if you have responses on your comment feed or engagement through sharing and so on, you should respond as best you can.

A brand that doesn’t respond is soon rejected. Customers like to be on social media because they have a voice. They expect that voice to be heard, and this is part and parcel of what you do for a brand online.

Make your work on a brand’s account equal parts posting and listening. Get into the habit of paying attention to what customers are saying and being a good ear to this. This makes more sense than just throwing out stellar content even. It makes absolutely no difference if you are creating the very best content in the world and then not responding to people who are on your social.

Remember that the key word here is ‘engagement’. It is all too easy to pour all of a digital marketing agency’s resources into great content (it is what your clients want after all) but focus on being engaging too. It makes the whole process more effective.

The used car salesman effect

You are working all the hours your office can hold you for, just so you do the very best for your clients. This is an urge that is understandable. Especially if you aren’t hearing from your client that the phone is ringing more because of your work on Facebook.

However, it is a fact that audiences on social media respect brands that don’t sell. It’s as simple as that. You have to understand this and ensure your content is never ‘salesy’.

But every now and then you get the irrepressible urge to sell. Even after all these years in which social media has been around, some brands think it is entirely appropriate to throw a ton of special offers at their audience, or to spend a whole day selling, simply because of targets that have to be met.

This is a really bad habit. Get users engaged in what you do, and turning up regularly to find out what your social feeds are going to offer next. This way, your audience will happily buy from you, simply because you’re not trying too hard.

Trying too hard will only come off as desperate. If they want to buy they will, and that is the bottom line that you should bear in mind.

The habits that will send you to social media Hell

Then there are the habits that are just unforgivable. This kind of stuff is what makes brands disappear off the face of the Earth. People do not, and never will, like spamming.

Now, while spamming may be many things to many people it is generally accepted that the following habits are to be avoided at all costs:

● Clickbait. This is one habit that you simply cannot afford to indulge in any more. Of course, post headlines can be enticing and eye-catching. But if the post behind it has absolutely nothing or little to do with the title, you’ve just created some prime-grade clickbait.

● Using hashtags because they’re popular. We don’t have to say too much about this one, the clue’s in the words. The next time you see a hashtag that is trending more than your client’s brand can possibly imagine, don’t think this means you should jump on it. That’s trying too hard and it looks spammy.

● Rush posting. You take a look at your client’s feed and we see that it’s been three days since you last posted. You spend the next hour posting thirty items. This is not good. You should be consistent, and this removes the need for rush posting. A few posts every day usually suffice for most platforms. And if a customer sees that you post a hundred updates and then nothing for two weeks, this looks like you’re one step below a basic social media bot.

We hope these bad habits are not part of what you do for clients. At the same time, we’re hoping you’re putting the opposite in place as habits. This way you’ll gain credibility and more engagement.

To show just how much engagement you’re getting on behalf of your client, try Locowise free for seven days. These metrics platform allows you to show your clients exactly what kind of value you’re giving, and it has pretty charts too. Lots of them.