Overcoming The 9 Barriers Of Social Media

Blogtrepreneur: Most bloggers would love to get more traffic with social media, regardless of how much they’re getting now. Unfortunately, a relatively small percentage of bloggers ever see significant results. If you’re looking to get more out of social media it’s important to know what’s holding you back so that you can fix it.
1. Lack of a Network
A strong network can help you with just about any aspect of blogging, and social media marketing is no different. There are a few specific ways that your network can help you to get some exposure through social media. First, members of your network are more likely than others to vote for your posts.
2. Lack of a Plan
Social Media Marketing is like any other type of marketing, it requires strategy and execution. If your current plan only involves submitting your posts and hoping that they get a bunch of votes, that’s not much of a plan.
Your social media plan should be defined by what you want to accomplish. The most obvious benefit of social media marketing is traffic, but the traffic means very little if it doesn’t convert into something. Otherwise, you’ll be left with some impressive stats for a few days, but nothing of real value to show for it.
3. Lack of an Audience
If no one sees your content, no one will be able to vote for it. I mentioned earlier how building a network can help you to build a larger audience that will be willing to vote for you content. I’m sure you’ve noticed that most of the submissions that reach the front page of Digg are from major sites (like TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Smashing Magazine, etc.).
4. Poor Content
One of the obvious reasons for not succeeding with social media is the content itself. I know when I started using social media I submitted a few things that completely did not fit with the audience. Not everything will draw attention from social media users. The content not only needs to be of high quality, but it also needs to be something that will appeal to these users.
5. Forcing Content
As I mentioned in the previous point, not all content will work with social media. If you’re trying to force the content, you’re unlikely to get results. I use a few niche social media sites for web design and development, and every now and then I’ll come across submissions that are completely out of place. None of these submissions will ever make it to the front page and they’ll never get any type of exposure. It’s simply a waste of time for the person submitting the content.
6. Lack of Focus
While your social media plan is important (point number 2), it’s also critical that you stay focused on your plan. Over the course of time it’s easy to get distracted by the numbers involved with social media and forget about what’s really most important to you.
7. Poor Timing
Timing is often overlooked by bloggers that are targeting social media traffic. Most of us learned quickly that blog traffic in general is lower on weekends, and that also applies to social media sites. So if your submission is featured on the front page of a social media site over the weekend you will get less exposure and less traffic than you would if this happened during the work week. On the other hand, less bloggers are targeting social media on the weekend, so getting to the front page might be a little easier.
8. Submitted by the Wrong Person
Many social media sites will make it easier or harder for a submission to have success based on the profile of the user that submits the item. If this is the case, your chances for success will be greatly improved if you can get a user with a strong profile to submit your post. You may have friends with strong profiles, or you may have one yourself. If you’re targeting Digg you’ll probably want to have someone specific submit your best posts, otherwise you’ll be taking a big risk if someone with a very weak profile submits a post that you were hoping to get to the front page.
9. Ineffective Titles
Standing out at a social media site is pretty difficult because there is so much content competing for the attention of users. The strength of your title will have a big influence on how many people click-through and how many people vote for you.
9 Barriers to Success with Social Media [Blogtrepreneur]