To the untrained marketer, social media marketing seems easy. Unfortunately, while you might be great at getting likes, comments, and shares on your personal social media accounts, social media marketing for a business is quite different. Your followers have specific expectations when they visit your business page, and it’s important to understand what mistakes can get you unfollowed for good. Here are a few of the top social media marketing mistakes to avoid:
Not Having a Strategy
A social media strategy is a roadmap for your campaigns, detailing everything from deadlines to budgets and goals. You won’t understand what you’re working toward if you don’t have one. Posting sporadically without a strategy is a good way to lose followers, especially if you have nothing interesting to say.
You should take your social media strategy as seriously as your email or influencer marketing strategy to get the best results. It should consist of objectives, a budget, types of content, promotions, and product highlights to clearly outline what you want to achieve with your social media channels.
Posting Frequency
While posting sporadically can hurt your follower count and engagement rates, posting too often can scare customers away. You don’t want to spam their feeds. Unfortunately, posting too little can also be a problem. Every platform has a unique audience and expectations. For example, it’s common for brands to tweet several times a day. However, using the same posting frequency on Facebook can get annoying for your customers. Meanwhile, customers can easily forget about you if you’re not posting enough. It won’t necessarily mean they’ll unfollow you, but the whole point of social media marketing is to stay on top of their minds.
Not Knowing Your Audience
Defining your target audience is crucial to reach as many prospects as possible. You should only concentrate your efforts on individuals most interested in your product. A shotgun approach that lets you target anyone and everyone is ineffective because it means wasting money targeting individuals who may not be interested in your offerings.
Knowing your target audience can help you target the right people with the proper posts while allowing you to experiment with posting frequency, times, and types to help you find those that generate the most traffic to your website.
Being Unengaged
Many small business owners post daily but fail to engage their audience. If you’re not replying to comments, shares, and mentions, you’re missing out on the unique aspects of social media. Social media is not an advertising tool; it’s a communications tool, allowing you to connect with your customers more personally.
Not Finding Partners
The very basis of social media is to be social. Partnering with other businesses, brands, and individuals can help you expand your reach. If you’re currently not working with influencers, consider investing in an influencer marketing platform to help market your products in a new way. Influencer marketing is more expensive than organic social media marketing, but it can help you reach new audiences and is much more effective.
Not Advertising
Advertising on social media is more cost-effective than any other type of advertising, allowing you to maximize your marketing spend while reaching more potential customers. If you’re not advertising, it’s unlikely that tons of people will see your organic posts unless you can make them go viral, which is much harder than it sounds. Advertising for just a few dollars a day can help you attract and convert more customers to help you reach your goals.
Overselling
Customers on social media don’t want to be sold to. Therefore, you shouldn’t promote your business blatantly because the whole point of these platforms is to be social. If you only promote your brand, its products, and various content, you can scare away your followers. Instead, consider taking a more customer-centric approach by creating posts guaranteed to capture your audience’s attention and make them want to take action.
Not Tracking
Social media platforms allow you to track everything from engagement to reach. If you’re not constantly monitoring your stats, you won’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Pay close attention to any analytics your social media platforms provide to help you brainstorm new ways to increase follower count, engagement, likes, comments, and shares.
Deleting User Content
Social media users sometimes mention your brand painting it in a negative light, or they create “negative” posts about your brand. Brands should never delete these comments or mentions because it can offend customers and make it seem like you’d rather hide from their complaints instead of dealing with them. If a customer posts about your brand online, always take the time to address any issues.
Of course, you should delete some types of content, such as racial slurs or abusive language. However, you shouldn’t delete negative reviews, posts of customers voicing complaints, and brand mentions. Instead, you can very politely contact angry customers directly to try to resolve the issue. Replying to any negative comments or posts can show the rest of your audience that you care about customer complaints and will do everything possible to make it right.
Using Every Platform
One of the worst mistakes you can make in social media marketing is using every platform to promote your brand. Always consider your audience and choose the platforms they’ll most likely be on. For example, if you have a D2C company with pet products, it’s highly unlikely you’ll find new customers on LinkedIn — a platform for professionals. Instead, you might use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
You can consider the age groups of your audience to decide which platforms are right for you. Every platform has a unique audience to help you determine which one to use. For example, if your audience is millennials or gen Z, you’re more likely to find them on TikTok and Instagram instead of Facebook.
Social Media Marketing Success
Apart from knowing these mistakes, finding what works for your brand based on its target audience is crucial. Knowing the types of content your audience engages with can help you create a more successful social media marketing strategy.
Author: Ashley Nielsen
Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.