5 flawed social media strategies you should shun

Social media is an incredibly useful communications tool, but it’s not everything the gurus tell you it is.

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Forget what the social media gurus have told you.

They’re wrong on just about everything. They promote strategies that frequently fail and can be downright dangerous to your budget. These “gurus,” who rarely use the tools to do anything except promote their guru status, have left PR practitioners using social media in the most impractical fashion.

Here are five of the strategies they endorse—all of them wrong:

1. Using every network to constantly, spontaneously post content.

Those who try to create conversations on every social network will fail to achieve much on any; those who concentrate on one or two might make a success of social media.

Moreover, many firms forget that they have to nurture social media communities: it’s no good generating a Google+ page and then contemplating that customers will miraculously convert your clear canvas into a booming place for discussion. Social media posts must be part of a program of planned persuasion. They should not just produced spontaneously.

Nor is it wise to concentrate on social networks that are the most fashionable (such as Facebook and SnapChat). Other networks might be more relevant to your target audience.

2. Believing that social media alone will make you well known.

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