Social media marketing mistakes, we all make them at one time or another. But why do some social media strategies fail? Well, everyone makes mistakes, including social media marketers. But make too many mistakes, and your followers and engagement will drop, along with your revenue.

No matter how big or small, every brand must maintain a robust social media presence these days. However, keep in mind that building a social media presence is more than just gaining more leads, customers, and sales.

 

8 Terrible Social Media Mistakes Brands Should Stay Away From

Social media should be a two-way street where you can develop a community, increase your reach, and know what people think about you. In this post, we’ll talk about the top social media marketing mistakes and more important, what you can do to avoid committing them.

Having no social media strategy at all

Having no social media marketing strategy will make it more challenging for you. For example, you don’t know:

• when and what to post,
• how to fill your content buckets, or
• what your audience prefers or wants.

You’re probably aware by now that there’s lots of noise going on in social media these days, and if you fail to come up with a robust social media strategy, it’s quite tricky to cut through the noise.

Developing an excellent social media strategy means that you’re creating specific goals, establishing benchmarks, planning, and so on.

Not knowing what you want to achieve

A primary focus will be on building a strong social presence. The tricky part it to not let your social presence dwindle. What are your main goals? Do you want to gain more likes, followers, and leads? Or do you want to establish your brand authority? If you don’t know what your goals are in the first place, then it’s hard for you to achieve it.

[Tweet “If you don’t know what your social media goal is, it will be hard for you to achieve it.”]

Ideally, every successful social media strategy should have the following components:

• Goals
• Strategies
• Target audience
• Team
• Time Investment

One of the biggest social media marketing mistakes centers around productivity. Social media has the power to suck up precious amounts of productive time from you and your staff, and yet give you very little in return. That’s why it’s crucial to create a robust social marketing plan, assign tasks, and stick to the plan.

Once you’ve already set plans to attain these goals, you can now move forward to taking necessary steps to achieve them. Set a time limit to ensure that you aren’t spending countless days in fruitless endeavors.

Unidentified target audience

Knowing and identifying who your target audience is essential. You might be focused on working hard, and yet without defining clearly who your target audience is, you’re still suffering because you might be aiming in the dark.

Having little to no interaction with your followers

Don’t feed your audience with a load of crafted marketing messages and expect them to take it all in. Remember that social media is all about being social – it’s all about people communicating with people. Being social is about conversations, engagements, and building relationships.

That’s why it’s vital that every single time you post on your social media profile, you add a bit of a human touch. Each time you respond to a comment, avoid an impersonal copy-and-paste corporate response.

Don’t be just a faceless company – reply with something that personally addresses questions and queries.

Should negative comments or events occur, it’s best to keep those emotions in check. Most situations can be resolved fairly. Instead of blaming others, it’s best to deal with the situation instead.

 

Not investing in paid social advertisements

Contrary to what most people think, yes, paid ads do work. Ads can help to expand your reach, increase revenue, and keep your loyal customers coming back again and again.

Think about it – approximately 3 billion people are actively using social media each day, and those numbers continue to rise.

However, you also need to have a clear understanding of:

• Why you’re running a social media campaign in the first place
• Where to place your ads
• How will you able to reach more users on social media
• What type of ads work well with your business to achieve your goals

The key here is appropriate goal-setting and defined KPIs.

[Tweet “Being social is about conversations, engagements, and building relationships.”]

Being overly promotional

While it’s true that most people hate promotional content, and even detest advertising, if you don’t invest on social media promotions, you’re may be limiting your potential for increased followers and likes on social media. This is why you have to use advertising subtly.

After all, your business needs to sell at one point or another. That’s why it’s okay now and then to post promotional material, as long as you don’t go overboard with it. The more engagement and social media interaction that you get, the more revenue you will enjoy.

Inconsistency in posting content

You can be inconsistent in social media in so many ways. From your posting schedule, the social media creatives you use, to the language you use, your brand should form a cohesive image across all of the social media channels you use.

In order to develop a successful brand, you have to make sure that:

• Your followers see you regularly.
• People can quickly identify your branded social media creatives.
• Users can easily relate to or be familiar with the type of social media tone that you use.

If these factors continuously change, then most of your customers won’t be able to recognize or relate to you. Of course, this is not the goal!  

[Tweet “You must be consistent in your social media efforts, from branding to content frequency and tone of voice.”]

Producing low-quality content and visuals

The social media landscape is getting more and more competitive these days. No one wants to see blurry photographs and low-quality images in their feeds. Posting screenshots, low-quality images, or no images at all, can make your profile look dull and boring.

Moreover, compelling visuals do better than just plain text. That’s why you have to make sure that you’re using high-quality images in all your posts on social media. Pixabay and Unsplash can help you source free photos and videos. Meanwhile, Canva, Crello, and AdobeSpark help you create quality, branded images.

Wrapping It Up

Are you currently committing one of these social media marketing mistakes? Not to worry, you can quickly turn it around by following the tips above.

What’s vital is to establish your goal, set a plan, and identify your target audience. When you avoid these most common mistakes, you’ll be able to your brand faster, build a stronger base of loyal followers, and boost your revenues in the long run.

Ciao,
Miss Kemya

This is a guest post from Kevin Urrutia, founder of Voy Media, a Facebook Marketing Agency based in New York. Voy Media believes in the power of Facebook advertising in helping businesses to boost their sales and improve their conversions. Voy Media aids businesses to push the right message to the right audience in order to deliver the right outcomes.