Social media marketing is a great way for small businesses to grow their customer base. In fact, 70% of the world’s largest brands are using social media to distribute content. Social media is a great tool to have a conversation with your customers and build your brand, but sometimes we end up making the same mistakes that could have been avoided.
Luckily, this post will point out these common mistakes and how to fix them and turn them into opportunities to market your business better.
The Importance of Engaging in Social Media
Everyone knows that social media is a great way to promote a company or product. But most people don’t know how to do it right. In fact, most companies fail at social media. They don’t realize that social media is not simply a place to promote your product.
Social media has become an integral part of the online experience. It is a great way to communicate with current and potential customers. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms allow you to engage in a two-way dialogue that can help you communicate with your customers. However, most companies are still struggling with this aspect of social media.
While you should definitely promote your product, you should also interact with your customers. With SMM (social media marketing) there are a few common mistakes that a lot of people make when first starting out.
The Common Social Media Mistakes + How To Avoid Them
Without further ado, here are the top eight mistakes made with social media marketing.
Mistake #1: Thinking of SMM as Just Another Channel
Social media marketing (SMM) is one of the most misunderstood components of an online strategy. It’s not just another channel, such as email marketing or pay-per-click (PPC), that you can do a little or a lot of and expect to get the same results. It’s a way of doing business, so you need to approach SMM with a plan and a strategy or it will distract you from the more important things you need to be doing.
Social media is a different animal than the others. It’s a conversation, rather than a broadcast. It’s a two-way street, rather than a one-way street. It’s not a platform to dump your content, but to engage with your audience. If you handle social media marketing like it’s email marketing, you’ll see a decrease in engagement and the growth of your audience.
Mistake #2: Not Having a Plan
The best way to handle social media is to follow a plan. To create a plan, you have to think about the following questions: Who is your target audience? What do you want to accomplish? What are your goals and objectives? How much time do you have to allocate to social media?
As you can see, there are many factors to consider when creating a social media marketing plan. It is important to know what your goals are and who your target audience is. When you understand the factors, you can start creating your plan. First, you need to create a calendar. You should decide when you will use social media and how much time you will spend on it each day.
Also, you need to decide which sites or platforms to use. You should develop a content marketing strategy and a posting schedule. You should also think about how you will measure your results.
Mistake #3: Not Using Analytics
A lot of businesses make the common mistake of not using analytics. They end up spending money on ads to acquire new customers, but they don’t get the return they had hoped for. They then don’t know if their ads worked or not, and they might end up spending a lot more money than they had originally planned.
In fact, most companies only use 16% of the data they have available to them. What?! That’s right! Did you know that there’s more than just Facebook or Google Analytics? There are a lot of other options out there. You can use Google Analytics, Segment, Intercom, Heap Analytics, Hotjar, or Kissmetrics, just to name a few.
If you don’t use any analytics at all, you could be losing out on a lot of valuable information that could help you optimize your ads and increase sales. It’s also a good idea to track your customer’s behavior so you can figure out how to best serve them.
Mistake #4: Not Managing your Feeds
Managing your social media feeds is an integral part of your social media marketing strategy, but it’s one that many businesses skip over. Why? It’s time-consuming and sometimes confusing. It’s also something that can be completely overlooked. But it’s absolutely necessary.
You always need to be on top of the conversations on your social accounts. It doesn’t matter if it’s a slow day; you need to be there. It’s not just about listening; you also need to participate. It’s not just about your own business, either. You need to be aware of what everyone else is talking about as well.
It’s a good idea to make a list of keywords you want to keep an eye on, so that you can tailor your responses to fit the topic at hand. By doing this, you’ll be able to make sure that you’re always adding value and engaging in the best way possible.
Mistake #5: Not Integrating SMM into your Digital Marketing Strategy
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a massive part of the online marketing strategy. And it’s not going anywhere. It is important to integrate SMM into your digital marketing strategy. There are a lot of elements that go into a successful SMM. The most significant factor is consistency. If you are not consistent with your efforts, it won’t be long before you give up on it altogether. It is important to measure your social media optimization efforts.
Without measurement, you won’t be able to tell whether you are on the right track or not. By measuring your social media optimization efforts, you will have a better idea of what to do and how to do it. This means that you should be measuring your efforts on a regular basis.
While some people believe that SMM and SEO are working in opposite directions, it is actually more accurate to say that they are simply not the same thing. The fact of the matter is that SMM can actually boost your SEO. If you have a social media presence and you are active on social media, Google considers this a good thing.
Mistake #6: Posting Irrelevant Content
One of the biggest mistakes I see in social media marketing is posting irrelevant content. Your social media accounts should be a reflection of your business and your brand. If you are a restaurant, you don’t want to post about your latest sale on kitchen appliances. If you sell kitchen appliances, you don’t want to post about your latest sale on a restaurant. If you post irrelevant content, you will lose followers and possibly customers. Remember, social media is about listening and engaging your audience. If you aren’t listening to your audience, you aren’t engaging with them.
Posting irrelevant content is a waste of your time as well as your readers’ time. Whether it’s irrelevant or not, posting irrelevant content will not improve your social media marketing. People will not comment on or share your social media posts if they are irrelevant.
When posting content, you need to consider if your content is relevant to your readers or not. If you are unsure, ask yourself, “Is this content relevant to the interests of my audience?” Answering the question can help you avoid posting irrelevant content.
Mistake #7: Not Being Careful With Who You Follow
Social media is an important marketing tool and one of the most important aspects of developing your brand’s online presence. However, it can be challenging to determine who you should follow on social media. It’s too easy to follow any and everyone who follows you.
You may feel like you are being a good follower by following people back, but you will be surprised to know that it is not always a good idea to follow everyone who follows you. If you follow too many people on social media, you will end up with a list that is too long for you to effectively manage.
Another common mistake that brands make is following people who only follow them back for a short period of time. You might think that these people are valuable and will help you grow your brand, but they are not. They are just following you for the sake of following you back.
Mistake #8: Using Automation Tools
This is a big one. Let’s face it: automation tools are great. They can save you time, they can help you save money, and most importantly, they can help you scale your social media marketing. But here’s the problem: automation tools can also create a lot of problems. Most of them are created for one purpose: to increase your reach on social media. But the problem is that they’re often not created with a human touch in mind.
Many of them don’t care about your brand’s tone of voice, your business goals, or what your customers want to hear. This is why you should be very careful when it comes to automation tools. Every tool can be used for good or bad, and if you use them incorrectly, you can really hurt your brand and your business.
Closing With Social Media Marketing Mistakes
We hope you enjoyed our post on common mistakes made in social media marketing. We see a lot of business owners and managers make the same mistakes over and over again in their social media marketing. Social media marketing can be extremely powerful when done correctly, but when done incorrectly can actually be detrimental to your business.
So hopefully, we were able to save your company precious time by avoiding these mistakes!
