You may be making social media marketing mistakes, and it is time to address that. Social media is as volatile as it is dynamic, especially when posts going viral go beyond your market’s circles. With this, anything which can risk your business’ name and reputation should be taken care of. Here are 5 mistakes you may be guilty of, and our suggestions to help get you off the hook.
#1 Taking on Social Media Marketing without a Plan
Getting into social media without much knowledge and strategy is a social media marketing mistake. Ultimately, failing to know the playing field and planning what to do will make you unable to deliver effective messages to your target market. You have to understand what it takes to put and keep your business in the social media map. Otherwise, your time and effort will be put to waste.
Knowledge is power to avoid social media marketing mistakes. It is a relatively new approach to hitting your target market, as even some businesses still consider marketing in this manner as still ineffective. To make social media effective, setting your social media marketing goals will help people recognize your brand identity and create a related community. Knowing where you stand in this area will also give you a better perspective on what and how to maintain and improve in your business.
Plan also about the content you will be posting to avoid making social media mistakes. Learn the tone of language you should use, the type of images and videos you should upload, and the focus of your posts after you know about the demographic of the target market who access your account. Knowing your competition will also be of advantage, as you can take points you can adapt or modify on your account.
Learning about the social media platform you will be engaging in is the best way to reach your goals and to avoid making social media marketing mistakes. Various social media websites are created with different ways of posting content, gaining engagements, and linking with other social media platforms. Some of them also offer advertising options for those who opt for a third party to take over the creation and maintenance of their account. Select the best for your business, especially the one which aids you in effective engagement.
#2 Paying for Shortcuts
Putting quantity over quality is one of the biggest social media marketing mistakes that your business can commit. As a general rule, shortcuts will likely cost you more in the long run than it will save. Building lasting and genuine customer relationships is what you should focus on, more than numbers on your statistics. Here are common shortcuts social media marketers make to desperately and impatiently rise the ranks of their business.
Paying for an increase in followers and fans is a social marketing mistake quite popular lately. Spam and fake accounts does not help in increasing your business’ return of investment and user engagement. It also diminishes the trust your current have, and waste business opportunities with potential customers when they find out the truth. It will cause damage to your business, and will undesirably affect your bottom line.
This social media marketing mistake will not go undetected as well. Social media sites have developed social visibility algorithms to track and analyze user interaction and engagement, and percentage of account followers. These sites limit the reach of accounts which have low engagement rates. Low numbers signify low interest and relevance among its followers.
Automated posting of back-links to your website is also a social media marketing mistake. Irrelevant links crowd your homepage, and just take the attention away from your purpose in having the social media account in the first place. Your followers and fans are wise enough to recognize after a while that these are just randomly generated. It makes you look like yet another spamming site, and makes you lose your customers and target market in the end.Isolating Social Media Marketing Approaches
#3 Isolating Social Media Marketing Approaches
Failure to integrate your business’ social media marketing approaches is another social media marketing mistake. You have to be consistent with your brand and its goals, especially for its customers. This includes the way you communicate with your stakeholders in all social media platforms you have accounts with.
Tying in your existing and future marketing endeavors with your social media ones will help you avoid social marketing mistakes. You don’t necessarily have to have the content across platforms in verbatim. You just have to make them complement, aligned with your business’ brand. We suggest that they have the same tone, style, and language to engage with your customers in a more personal, conversational, and transparent manner.
Choosing the people who you employ in your marketing team is a way to avoid this social media mistake. They should understand the brand and the culture of your business to know the tone they should be using in developing strategies. They should possess good communication skills, passion for your brand, and a technological savvy to cope with the times. Make sure that they are able to commit the effort and time to study how your business works to translate it to language understandable in your social media audience.
You should also get marketing personnel who are able to learn and work well together to avoid this social media marketing mistake. It is quite difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, but having the old and new get into a compromise for the welfare of your business is something you can do. Remind the mixed demographic in your marketing department of your business’ identity and goals to be able to communicate effectively not only across social media platforms but also other ways of advertising as well
#4 Dealing Poorly with Negative Feedback
Another social media marketing mistake you should take note of is not being able to handle negative feedback about your business. Social media users come from a very diverse demographic, but they are generally vocal with what they like and what irks them. When people fail to engage with your account, it is an alarming sign as well. Ignoring the negativity may be an easy solution, but it does not make it go away.
Taking proactive action on negative feedback will help you avoid making social media marketing mistakes. Remember that you have reached out to your target market to reach your business’ goals, hence it is also your responsibility to address their issues and concerns on their product’s/service’s experience. Once you have acknowledged these with a professional, graceful, and positive demeanor, you are able to help build the loyalty and trust of your market.
Learn how to deal with trolls and bullies to avoid social media marketing mistakes as well. These people may not have availed what you have to offer, hence asking about their experience may intimidate them enough to stop. If they don’t, as your last recourse, you may delete and block them. This is also a course of action you could immediately do to those who have outright displays of an offense not only to your business but to anybody engaging in your account.
Not getting enough feedback and engagement is also an indicator you should acknowledge to avoid making a social media marketing mistake. Your posts may not be getting as many engagements- likes, shares, and comments- as you thought it will. You might want to review and improve on your social media marketing strategy. It could also help to read tips to help you increase your social media engagement.
#5 Turning Silent
Disappearing or having a dwindling presence from the social media world is a social media mistake. One minute you create numerous social media profiles, post interesting content and spread the word about your presence in social media. The next thing is you totally disappearing, or posting only after a long while. You have to learn that social media is very dynamic, and being updated will keep your business account worth looking into.
Patience and persistence is key to avoid making this social media mistake. Gaining followers and fans along with their loyalty takes a while, and making your presence felt will surely help with that. Study on how you should pace your posts. You have to keep the content interesting enough to anticipate the next post. You also have to time it best so that they would be checking on your account more often.
Your marketing staff can help you avoid this social media marketing mistake. As the ones who conceptualize and most likely maintain your social media accounts, they understand your audience.
Wrapping it up
Are you guilty of these 5 social media marketing mistakes? If you are, then now’s the perfect time to take care of it. If you are not, well good for you! Though it is good to know what the risks are in your business and avoid these as much as possible.