Social media mistakes can happen in the most innocent of ways. Here are two social media mistakes I made with a brand new client that just about cost me the job and also made her think I was crazy. Luckily we worked it all out and now have a great relationship, but these two social media mistakes are worth sharing so others don’t do what I did.
The new customer is located on another continent. We corresponded (although not extensively) via email before I was hired. My job was to re-write some of the company website for SEO. But before I started this project I bought 2 new things:
A. I purchased Practical SEO Copywriting (Click here to view more details) by Glenn Murray and it is the perfect SEO copywriting guide in my mind.
B. I purchased Office 10.
I can’t say enough great things about the Practical SEO Copywriting book – it truly helps fine tune anyone’s writing. One of the tools highlighted in the book is the use of Word Clouds using a Word Cloud generator like Wordl. Word Clouds are fantastic and are a great visual to actually see what stands out in your writing. But ultimately the use of a couple of Word Clouds played a leading role in my social media mistakes.
The Two Social Media Mistakes
1. I wrote the fresh copy, saved it in my new version of Word and sent it as an attachment. The customer’s computer is a MAC with older software and as a result could not open my attachments resulting in extreme frustration on her end.
2. I made beautiful Word Clouds and put them in the body of the email. While I thought I had explained the function of Word Clouds in the email, she did not understand what I was doing at all. Especially since she could not open the attachments. She actually thought I was suggesting that we change her front page to look like the Word Cloud. Bottom line, she thought I was a lunatic and that she had made a huge mistake hiring me!
It took a lot of explaining via an hour long phone conversation to undue the perceptions that I had caused by trying to be cutting edge. I now “sort of” giggle about this, but that was a conversation that could have been completely avoided had I not tried to be so advanced.
Social Media Mistakes – Lessons Learned
1. This was the first overseas connection that I had not been able to at least Skype with. In a situation like this it’s good to remember the KISS mentality – totally keep it simple (or else you will look really stupid like I did!).
2. In the future I will always ask how the client prefers to receive information – in other words ask what version of programs they are using to make sure they can open/see what is being sent.
3. When working with someone over the internet, never assume anything! I assumed that since my client had a website and seemed to understand what I was talking about she would understand the Word Clouds and see how I had written the copy to her keywords which would help with her SEO. I could not have been more wrong.
Social Media Mistakes happen. I was lucky to be able to rectify this very avoidable situation and hope that this post will help others sidestep the problems that I had!
What Social Media Mistakes have you learned from? (Whether they were of your own doing or someone else’s….)
Great tips! Thanks for sharing.
I’ve never asked a client how they prefer to receive information… I haven’t had a problem yet, but have probably just been lucky. I’ll be taking your advice and ensuring I ask from now on.
Thanks Kazia! I sure never thought about asking – learn something everyday!!
Hi Leslie,
A great post, always something to be aware of when dealing with clients, especially those that you can’t meet face to face, or speak to via skype/phone.
I work on a mac and often forget that a lot of people don’t. When developing websites I need to to double check how things look on a windows or linux pc. The same is true going the other way as well. And as you noted above it happens with software as well.
In reading your post I was waiting for the social media mistake to happen.
In mistake 1, you were using a new version of Word that the client couldn’t open on a mac. In mistake 2 you sent Word clouds from Wordle to your client in an email.
I just don’t see the social media part.
Hi Jayson,
Thanks so much for your comment! This client came to me for online marketing help and since I am just launching a social media marketing agency, all online marketing falls pretty much under the heading of social media these days for me. The website SEO stuff I was working on was also to be used for all aspects of their social media marketing hence my correlation. It was such a strange string of events that I thought I would share it. Thanks again for taking the time to post!
Good thing you were able to solve the issues. But these are really great tips. Thanks for sharing.
ReputationManagementConsultants.com
Thank you so much Marie!