Social media plays a crucial role in today’s business landscape. Social media marketing can certainly be a lucrative strategy for your business. It can help you improve your brand visibility, increase web traffic, and even turn your audience into clients.
Whether you’re a startup or a more established company, social media is vital to increasing awareness for your products and services, so make sure you get it right or you jeopardize alienating your audience.
“The State of Inbound” 2014-2015 study conducted by HubSpot found that 80% of respondents saw social media as one of the most significant sources of leads in addition to other digital marketing channels.
While social media can make you more successful – certain mistakes can have grim effects on your business or brand.
Here are the top 8 mistakes you want to avoid in order to make social media a powerful tool for your business:
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No Strategy
Without a plan, your marketing on social media will be quite ineffective.
Without a strategy for your social media, communications can seem unconnected and muddled, and most likely you won’t be able to deliver effective messages to your audience.
If you want to be successful, consider who your target audience is and what your campaign goals are. Devise a plan on how to have a distinct voice, measurable goals, a social media policy, and a publication calendar – and start implementing your strategy.
Remember, a clearly defined social media strategy will be your avenue for offering useful, engaging content that is sticky and memorable.
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Frequency Of Posting
If you are not posting consistently and regularly, you are not being effective with your social media marketing campaigns for your business. If you post once every few days, your business account will not get enough visibility to generate any significant growth.
Give people and other businesses a solid reason to follow you with a steady supply of good content.
On the other hand, publishing many posts within minutes or hours from one another can seem very pushy and can actually alienate your followers and prospects.
So keep in mind that ideally your posts should be shared consistently and spread out in order to avoid overwhelming and spamming your followers.
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Number And Choice Of Platforms
Your business will probably benefit from having a presence across multiple social media platforms. Still, that doesn’t mean that you should be on all of them.
Depending on your type of business, you will want to be on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and maybe not on Pinterest and Instagram. The key is to align your platforms with your target audience.
While most brands are active on Facebook, for certain niches and its demographics, platforms like SnapChat and Pinterest will be much more beneficial.
Finally, beware that you could be selling your self short by not being present on enough social media platforms. It’s worth the short time it takes to repost or syndicate a piece of content even if it’s for just a few dozen followers on that platform – plus, you can reap benefits of search visibility by claiming your brand’s social profile.
So consider your demographics and your content – and then invest in the platforms that can really benefit your brand.
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Too Personal Or Too Self-Promoting
Don’t be like some businesses that overdo it with personal content. While it’s certainly true that Millennials have transformed the work culture with visible tattoos, piercings, casual attire, groovy and hip workspaces, etc., there are still some boundaries to respect when it comes to social content for your business. It should still be professional, tasteful, and not too personal.
An occasional baby picture, or a photo of your playful pet, with a good, clean humor or an interesting content is more than OK – but bombarding your followers with multiple and frequent photos from your personal life is not cool.
Keep your posts creatively related and relevant to your business or marketing goals.
A good rule of thumb seems to be to post mostly relevant syndicated or repurposed content from others, then your own content significant to your audience but not sales-y, and much less of some fun, more personal content that will help humanize your brand.
And remember, always making it all about your brand will not do.
Important thing to avoid in your posts or comments on social media: being critical, insensitive, or offensive. Also, avoid taking a controversial stand and using divisive topics, such as religion and politics (unless they are closely related to your brand).
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Not Responding To Your Followers
Social media requires you to socialize with others. Your regular posts are most likely generating responses. Do not ignore comments and questions, or your audience will lose interest in your posts. Instead, make sure you log in all of your social platforms regularly, check for new interactions, and acknowledge them in some way.
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Ignoring Or Overusing Features
Social media platforms keep rolling out new features to be competitive and to help individuals and brands.
You don’t necessarily have to try out every new feature, but all are worth considering and many will be worth implementing. For instance, Facebook’s new organic audience-targeting feature, or hashtags that have been around for some time, yet many are still not utilizing them. Just make sure you use such features properly.
Do you schedule all your posts ahead of time? While this is very convenient, avoid falling into the trap of scheduling all your social media posts far in advance – the too-precise patterns and non-fluid language of your posts will make you seem too robotic, less sincere, and, sometimes, outdated.
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Not Seeking Opportunities And Not Listening To Feedback
Of course, you want your follower base and business in general to grow over time, but are you applying the same strategies over and over again?
If you don’t seek out new conversations and keep increasing your presence, you most likely won’t see much, or any, growth. If you’re not seeking new ways to improve, and you’re not targeting new users, you’re missing out on new opportunities to help your brand strengthen its presence on social media and to ultimately convert clients.
Seek out running conversations on social media’s other brand pages, and those prompted by influencers in your industry. Distinguish yourself as a thought leader – express clear, debatable opinions and engage other users.
Also, when you’re not listening to what your followers have to say, directly or through behavioral cues, you’re neglecting chances for self-improvement. Instead, take pride in being open to feedback and implementing it into your campaign as appropriate.
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Buying Your Audience Or Likes
Yes, everyone strives for a huge number of followers and likes – it shows your social presence is great and builds your visibility. However, you should only seek to get genuine and organic following.
Do not make a mistake of paying for your audience – it will not boost engagement, improve ROI, or help you build real relationships. On the contrary, it can be damaging for your brand reputation and your real social accounts.
Making mistakes we talked about can be dangerous, not so much because they can destroy your social media campaigns, but because they may easily go unnoticed. Invest your time and efforts in your social media campaign, and pay attention to latest trends, and, most importantly, your followers.
Paying attention to these social media rules will help shape a solid foundation that will benefit your customers, your brand, and your bottom line.
At RODA marketing we understand the importance of brand reputation and recognition, and our commitment and efforts are focused on brand consistency and generating qualified traffic via well thought out campaigns that include social media, SEO, blogging, infographics and more.
Check out our portfolio and contact us to see how together we can take your business to higher levels of success with effective Internet marketing.