Career Professionals: Are You Making These Mistakes With Your Social Media?

On our "Social Media Strategies" call last month, Sean asked me to come up with the "Biggest Mistakes Resume Writers Make On Social Media."

Here is an excerpt of four items from that list of mistakes.

Sean asked me to handle the part about the biggest mistakes that résumé writers make because, again, this is an area that I have not only a lot of interest in -- but I also analyze a lot of what those of us who are posting on social media have done.

Mistake #1: Not Posting EnoughThe first mistake that I have seen is that you’re not posting enough. That’s one of those things that’s a hard thing to handle -- especially when you’re getting started, or you have a small following. You think, “Gosh, is it worth my time and effort to put that content out there, if nobody is reading it?” But the neat thing about social media is it has a huge shelf life. So even things that you have posted months ago or weeks ago you can always resurface that content as your audience continues to grow. Not posting enough is probably the biggest mistake.

Aligned with that is not prescheduling content. I talked before we started the call recording, a lot of us obviously wear a lot of hats, and so I know when I get busy with working with my actual one-to-one resume clients, the stuff that suffers the most is my marketing -- my blogging, my social media posting -- so one of the things that you can do is if you’re finding yourself in a slow period, go ahead and preschedule content. I use Hootsuite -- as well as Facebook’s native ability to preschedule posts -- so that I have content that is out there on a more regular basis, otherwise I look up, and suddenly it has been a week and I haven’t put anything out there. Make sure that you are using your time and scheduling the content ahead of time when you’re not as busy, so that it is out there on a consistent basis.

Consistency in social media is probably one of those things that’s universally not done well. People tend to post a whole bunch of stuff and then they go silent -- and you just don’t want to do that, because Facebook in particular is going to penalize you, if that is the case. If you haven’t had a lot of engagement from your followers in a while, then they (Facebook) take your post out of the news feed -- and that’s what Sean is talking about in terms of organic reach -- the ability for you to reach folks who have raised their hand and said, “Hey, I want to get content from you, related to the job search.”

Mistake #2: Only Posting on Your Facebook Business PageAnother big mistake that I’ve seen — and I’ve seen it on both sides -- I’ve seen it as a mistake when people don’t do it and I’ve seen it be tremendously effective when people do it -- is when you only post on your (Facebook) business page. If one of your goals is to try and grow your Facebook following, one of the ways to do that is to get people who already know, like, and trust you as a human being, to follow your Facebook Business Page. So, cross posting some of that content — although not at the same time — that is also one of the mistakes — posting the same content, either on multiple pages that you manage or on your personal and business page at the same time, don’t do that.

But if you shared a resource over on your Facebook Business Page, then share that on that your personal Facebook page too: “Hey, I just wrote this blog post about the five biggest mistakes people make on their resumes” and put that on your personal profile, because for at least 99 percent of us, we are more likely to have more friends on Facebook than we have followers for our business page. 

One really effective way that you can grow your audience on your Facebook Business Page is to get some of those friends to follow you. I talked about this on the Get Clients Now program for the last couple years, the sources of new clients for established resume writers a lot of times are referrals, and it’s not just referrals from past clients-- it’s people that we interact with on a daily basis.

So, posting content on your Facebook business page and then sharing it on your personal Facebook page, or just sharing information about the work that you’re doing with clients on your personal page. 

I have seen several examples of resume writers who do this successfully — and it can be as simple as celebrating a win for one of your clients. Not naming them by name, not tagging them, but just saying, “just helped an accountant get her first job” if you’re working with someone who is new to the workforce, “helped this client land a $10,000 raise through interview coaching.”

Here's an example:

Celebrating and shouting out the work that your clients are getting in terms of results -- but putting that on your personal Facebook page so that folks know that you’re a resume writer. There are career industry colleagues that you would never know what they do for a living if you just looked at their personal page-- and maybe they are doing that intentionally -- but if it’s your goal to get more fans and followers and engagement and clients and all of those things, that’s a simple way that you can help increase your ability to get your message out.

Mistake #3: Talking AT Your Fans and Followers, and Not WITH Them
Another mistake -- and Sean mentioned this, too -- is the one-way conversation. A lot of times on social media, I’ve seen career industry colleagues who post a lot of stuff -- and then, when people comment on it, they don’t respond back. Just like with Facebook Live, you want to acknowledge when people send you stuff. Monitor your Facebook content to make sure that if people are asking you questions or are saying, “Wow, that’s a great resource” -- just acknowledge them, like their comment -- or, even better, comment back or say, “Hey, thanks for the feedback.”

All of those engagement strategies are going to help your content get organically boosted in people’s Facebook feeds going forward. Don’t look at it as just a one-way conversation; look at how you can encourage engagement. And, like Sean was talking about, with Facebook Live, we talked about having people submit questions. You can do that on your own Facebook page too. “Hey, I am working on a new resource on job interviews. What questions do you have about the job interview?” and then let people submit questions onto that post. It not only gives you better insight into what challenges and struggles people are having, but it also helps you identify particular clients that you might be in the position to help.

Mistake #4: Doing Too Much of One Kind of Content

The other thing is to mix up your content. Another mistake that people make -- and particularly when you’re talking about pre-scheduled content -- is that they focus primarily on text-based posts, because obviously those are the easiest, in terms of creating the content. But you really want to have a mix of text posts, videos, and picture posts. 

I know a lot of you guys use the BeAResumeWriter.com Pass-Along Materials and quote those directly. 

I just saw a perfect example today Sterling Career Concepts took one of the excerpts from a Pass-Along Materials content and made it into a picture post. So she took the text and just put it over a background and shared that content. Look at different ways that you can share the information in terms of not just doing static posts.

These are just FOUR of the mistakes I outlined for career services professionals.

If you're interested in learning what the OTHER mistakes are -- and the other information Sean and I shared in the training about growing your fans and followers, using analytics to get better engagement, and more, check out this special offer!

Get access to the Social Media Strategies training.

Guest Post: Clarifying Social Media Strategy with the POST Method

By Christine Gallagher

It sounds simple, but before you implement a new marketing strategy in your business, you need to first know what your objectives are. That is, what is it that you are trying to accomplish? Social media is no different. It's not enough to want to add it to your marketing mix because "everyone else is doing it."

Luckily, Forrester Research came up with a handy little acronym, which my colleague Amy Miyamoto and I also included in our Social Media Made Simple webinar series. It's called the POST Method, and it's a really easy way to frame your social media strategy. Here's how it breaks down:

P: Who are the PEOPLE you would most like to attract via your social media presence on sites such as Twitter and Facebook? For example--mentors, colleagues, strategic alliance partners, raving fans, potential clients, local connections? Or a combination of these?

O: What are your primary OBJECTIVES for your Social Media presence? For example, is it to get found by those who are looking for your services or products, finding and interacting with current and potential clients and customers, building a community around your business, creating awareness of your content and offerings, building relationships with potential strategic alliance and referral partners, learning from mentors?

S: What Social Media STRATEGIES do you plan to implement? Will you have a Twitter profile, a Facebook Fan Page, a LinkedIn profile, join a Facebook Group, start a blog? Which ones have priority over others?

T: What TECHNOLOGIES will you use? For example--Hootsuite, Twellow, Ping.fm, Twitpic, YouTube, Bit.ly for link shortening? (The ones you determine to be of highest priority to you will influence the kinds of actions you take on the social media sites you have a presence on.)

Finally, for bonus points, you could also include "M" as in "how will you MEASURE your results?" Understandably, businesspeople still want to know the ROI of their activities--and although this is not as cut and dry to measure in social media, there are still certain numbers that you can look to: your number of newsletter or blog subscribers, number of followers and fans, your website traffic, the amount of comments on your blog, how many purchases made, etc.

The POST method is a good basic structure for starting to define your social media plan, objectives, and priorities. By identifying all the relevant parts of the structure you are creating a clearer vision and purpose--as well as implementing goals, strategies, and tools that will best enable you to effectively reach the ideal people you are looking to connect with through social media.

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Christine Gallagher is founder of ShesGotClients.com, a company dedicated to teaching women entrepreneurs all over the world how to use authentic relationship marketing and online strategies to attract raving fans, enroll more clients, and enjoy more income and freedom in their business, all while sharing their gifts and their message in a much bigger way.

Christine created The 6 Simple Steps to Kick Start Your Social Media Success System(TM), a real-world, step-by-step "roadmap" that teaches entrepreneurs how to consistently bring in new clients and customers using the Internet.

Through her coaching and training business, Christine helps entrepreneurs maximize their profits using an integrated social media and online marketing strategy, and teaches them how to stop trading dollars for hours by using online information marketing techniques.

Christine was recently featured as a social media marketing expert in the book Get Scrappy: A Small Business Owner's Guide to Marketing On Less, as well as profiled as one of "16 Brilliant Business Minds on Twitter" by The Huffington Post. Her blog was also recently chosen as one of the top 50 small business blogs by Konector.com, and her newsletters, products, and online reach now educate and inspire over 18,000 people every month.

Learn more about Christine, her products, programs and courses at ShesGotClients.com

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