Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes

Social media done right has huge potential to grow your customer base, your brand community, and increase your ROI. Apart from this, it can also help your brand connect with potential and current customers and improves your brand recognition. Many companies think having accounts on social media platforms with intermittent posts is sufficient. Unfortunately, this will rarely produce any remarkable results.

This article will tell you ten of the most common social media marketing mistakes to avoid and suggestions for how to do it better. It will also share some common social media mistakes examples that you and your business can learn from.

Social Media Marketing Mistakes

10 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Not Having a Strategy

The first marketing mistake to avoid is arguably the most important: not having a strategy. Having social media and posting on it with no overall strategy will not give you the results you want. An effective social media marketing strategy requires an action and clearly defined goals. Is your goal to gain likes and followers? Why? Do you hope that they turn into sales leads? Do you want to cement your brand authority? Your strategy should also identify the types of posts to be used. Research which types of posts get the most engagement on different platforms and incorporate more of those. For example, Facebook posts with images receive two times more engagement than posts without images. 

Not Targeting Your Audience

The second marketing mistake to avoid will have a huge impact on the success of your social media strategy. With over 3 billion people using social media, you need to target your audience in order to be successful. Researching and identifying your target audience should be done while, or even before, you decide on your social media strategy. It is not as easy as simply posting content and hoping your audience finds your profile. You have to actively work to reach the people that will benefit the most from your products or services.

One place to start is creating customer persona sheets using your Google Analytics, email, and current social media statistics. Compiling this data will give you insight into your target audience’s habits and interests. Having this clear understanding of who you are targeting will also make it easier to create content specifically for them. You should tailor your posts and campaigns for each target audience. 

Utilize the targeting capabilities of each platform. Each social media platform allows you to target your audience for every post. Facebook and Instagram have the most powerful targeting capabilities, with the ability to get very specific. Taking the time to do this will make your posts much more successful, showing it to the correct people.

Not Tracking Results

In order to know whether your strategy is working, you have to have a way to measure the results. You should plan for how you are going to do this and how often before you begin your marketing campaign. Tracking results will also give you a way to make strategic changes and further target your audiences. You can easily stop an ad that isn’t performing at any moment, which will save you money.

Still, you need to be realistic about your results. Many marketers expect amazing results right from the first post or the first campaign. Be prepared to tweak and test different types of posts and different target audiences before you start getting results. 

Thinking Each Platform Is The Same

This marketing mistake to avoid is one that a huge number of companies make. You will find the same content, in the same format, with the same text on every one of their social media platforms. Social media done right takes into account the differences of each platform and the different expectations for the audience on each platform.

Keep in mind that every social media platform has different strengths, marketing tools, and audiences. The audiences will vary in demographics, behaviors, and interests. In addition, each platform also has its own customers, language, and type of content. Your content should reflect these platform and audience differences.

Social Media Mistakes

Not Handling Negative Comments Properly

Another common marketing mistake to avoid is mishandling negative comments, especially in the beginning. The first instinct for a lot of marketers is to simply delete or avoid negative comments. Others may come up with a canned, insincere response. 

Online platforms invite comments and that can be a very attractive prospect for companies. However, with positive comments come negative ones as well. Negative feedback should be used as an opportunity to improve the quality of your offering and build trust. 

When you receive a negative comment it should be treated as an opportunity to turn that unhappy person into a loyal customer. Each comment should be given the respect that would be given to someone who approaches you in person with a negative comment. First, acknowledge what they are saying. Engage with them on the thread and then try to take the conversation to a private messenger. This is where you can learn more about the issue and find out what kind of resolution they would like.

Customers rarely expect a formal apology when they leave a negative review or comment. Instead, they are looking for assurance that the experience will be better next time, for them and for everyone else. 

Not Engaging with Customers or Followers

Improved engagement is one of the most common social media marketing goals. But most brands do not design their posts to encourage conversations or engage back with the comments they receive. This marketing mistake to avoid gives off the impression that the brand isn’t interested in having a conversation with their customers.

When someone replies to your post, your social media team should respond too. This can be as simple as liking the comment, or you can send back a personalized comment. The more you respond, the more customers will want to engage. Take each comment as an opportunity to increase engagement even further and encourage more followers to participate. Active participation on your part can be expected to result in follower growth and a higher engagement rate.

Having Too Many Accounts

A common marketing mistake to avoid is creating an account on every social network out there. Many companies do this before they realize that they are stretching their resources very thin and therefore not getting the results they want. 

If you only have one dedicated marketing person, they generally cannot effectively manage more than two to four accounts. If this is the case, their attention should be focused on the platforms that you know your audience is already on. Then, you can further prioritize your time by analyzing which platform produces the most results.

Social Media Done Right

Not Having a Human Touch

People want to connect with other people. Social media done right should be a place for companies to show their human side. This is especially important for startups and small businesses. People like to feel connected to the team behind the company. Give them a sense of who you are. You can do this by responding to people with personalized comments. You can also share real stories about people within your company.

Not Being Consistent

If your strategy says you are going to post twice a day, post twice a day. Once your posts become regular, taking a day off of posting can affect your engagement rates. This can quickly damage any efforts you have made so far. The best way to combat this is to schedule your posts. Hootsuite, Buffer, and Tweetdeck are some of the most popular scheduling tools. A social media calendar can also help ensure you have a plan for what to post every day in advance. 

Buying Followers

Consider this not just a social media marketing mistake to avoid, but actually a social media sin. Some companies will buy followers to make it look like they are much more popular than they are. But users are smart. If they notice that you have a large amount of followers and are only getting a couple likes and no comments on your posts, they will see it as a red flag. 

Besides looking bad to potential customers, many social media platforms have strict policies about buying followers. If it is discovered that you have, it increases the chance that your account gets banned or deleted.

Social Media Mistakes Examples

Social Media Mistake Examples

A social media mistake example is that a study by Smart Insights showed that 80% of companies think they deliver exceptional social media customer service. Meanwhile, only 8% of those companies’ customers say they agree.

The social media management company Buffer offers another example. They were originally posting an incredible amount of content every day. Averaging four to five posts on Facebook and up to 14 posts on Twitter every day. When they cut their Facebook posts in half to one or two every day, their engagement increased threefold.

Another social media mistake example would be using the same type of advertisement on Snapchat and on Facebook. Snapchat has a very specific audience. The same people who use Snapchat likely are not using Facebook and vice versa. Therefore, the same advertisement will most likely not be effective for both audiences. Advertisers who don’t do research before using a platform will end up wasting a lot of time and money. 

Are You Overwhelmed?

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the idea of implementing your social media marketing strategy? Do you need help evaluating your current strategy? Is your strategy not producing the results you wanted or expected? Hiring a digital marketing company like SEO Design Chicago might be a good option for you. An expert will be able to tell you what is working, how you can make things work better. They can also take some of the stress off of your shoulders.

If you or your marketing manager are overwhelmed and unsure what to do next, SEO Design Chicago is ready to help. With significant experience with every major social media platform, we are ready to make our expertise work for our company

Common Social Media Mistakes

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