Do you feel like your social network marketing strategy is missing the mark? Are your attempts to communicate with new customers met with an eerie silence? While you’ve made a good choice to get involved with social media marketing, your strategy may need to be tweaked.

Here are some common social media marketing pitfalls that may be the source of the silence:

1. Constricting your strategy one-way communication: Some companies think they have the “magic bullet,” the one message that will attract all kinds of new customers. They then focus their social media marketing strategy on getting that one message out. Catchy tag lines are good for grabbing attention, but what happens after that? No one message can possibly attract a broad range of people. Even if it did, there needs to be some type of incentive for people to engage with your company. If your organization is speaking to customers without enabling them to provide feedback, you are missing out on opportunities to build customer loyalty and to gather useful research data.
2. Focusing on two-way communication between your company and a single member: It seems that the solution to one-way communication would be to promote two-way communication between your company and individual members. But, this is not enough. Sure it’s a step in the right direction. At least you’re engaging potential customers, but if you only engage them one-on-one, you’re missing out on the true potential of social media sites. Ideally you want to members to speak out on your company’s behalf not just get information from you. You want them to help you get the word out, to communicate with each other and to spread the word through their own networks. This is the way messages spread at a viral pace.
3. Relying on too much hype: People are increasingly becoming media savvy. They can smell hype from a mile away and are often turned off. It’s great to focus on your company’s strengths - and you should. But, if you cross the line into the realm of over-inflated adjectives and exaggerated testimonials, you begin to lose credibility.
4. Repurposing traditional micro sites: Many agencies are more familiar with traditional interactive marketing strategies and may feel that repurposing a successful micro site can be a social media marketing strategy. The main problem with this, according to a recent post by Jeremiah, is that many of the computer-to-human features of micro sites don’t foster the self-expression or sharing that drives successful social media marketing campaigns.

These are just a few common pitfalls. Social media marketing is not like traditional marketing. It presents a new batch of challenges and almost unlimited potential. The key is to figure out how to engage others and stop talking to yourself.