Social media is an invaluable tool in growing business nowadays. It helps connect brands and their customers in the digital space, where the buyer’s journey mostly happens today. Apart from that, the platform also allows you to build trust and authority while attracting traffic to your website.
However, the opposite happens when you do social media the wrong way. It can impact your lead generation efforts and damage your business reputation. Therefore, it matters that you’re aware of the dos and don’ts in a social media campaign. This post will discuss the typical social media marketing mistakes beginners make and provide some tips on avoiding those errors.
Table of Contents
Starting Your Campaign Without A Plan:
Many beginners who make their first steps in social media fail to develop a marketing strategy. As a digital marketer, your first step should be to understand your possibilities when it comes to social media and your business goals.
Doing social media marketing without knowing how to market your posts and what step to take next is like driving without knowing how much fuel you have and where the road leads to. It’s a mistake that can make your whole social media campaign flop, rendering all your efforts wasted.
Not Knowing Who Your Audience Is:
Social media is a massive platform where you can find and connect with your target market. Your social media campaign is basically done if you do not understand your target audience. And no matter how hard you work on your social networks, the results will likely be disappointing.
Here’s the thing: Assuming your audience is everyone is like shooting in the dark. Your posts will not generate any conversions if your target audience does not see them. And for broad audiences, your products or services will likely be of little or no interest.
Study your audience to understand them better. Identify the different segments of your followers, such as their age, gender, industry, preferences, city, etc. This doesn’t only help you create more precise targeting but also enables you to adjust your tone and content accordingly.
Buying Your Followers:
Buying followers will mess with your metrics. Whenever you make a post, it shows up in the feed of a few select members of your audience. The more people like and comment on it, the more the algorithm thinks it’s a good post, and it will continue showing it to other subscribers.
Now, imagine one-half of your audience are accounts with various subscriptions. You originally had 500 subscribers and paid to get 1000 more. As a result, your paid followers will likely be uninterested in your posts and won’t engage even if they bothered checking their feed.
In addition, the fake accounts will prevent the posts from targeting your organic followers. When this happens, your original subscribers will see fewer of your posts. In turn, it takes your leads away from the goal.
Too Much Self-Promotion:
One marketing mistake beginners often make is promoting their brands a lot. With almost every company using social media for their business, spamming has become prominent. As such, posting automatic links and spamming your followers can cause you to lose subscribers.
In marketing your products or services on social media, remember to do it as subtly as possible. After all, customers generally won’t want to follow a brand that only wants to sell them stuff. To further engage your audience, offer something worthwhile such as commentary, insights, and relatable features, among others.
Not Posting Regularly:
Not having regular posts can affect your impressions and engagement rates. It can harm your social media marketing efforts, as your content can get hidden from most of your followers.
Social media is all about regular communication. Hence, you should strive to publish content regularly. To make things easier, consider scheduling your posts automatically for certain times of the day or week. This way, you can ensure there’s always something going on in your channel.
Using Irrelevant Hashtags:
It should go without saying that you can only use hashtags that make sense in your post. Stated otherwise, make sure to give your hashtags some thought before you hit “publish.” The hashtags are supposed to allow consumers to interact with your brand and using irrelevant ones only ruins this strategy.
For one thing, unrelated hashtags are the social media counterpart of spam, messing up your brand’s message while isolating current and potential followers. They can also cause your post to get lost among others that use the same hashtags. To avoid this, use relevant hashtags in line with your brand’s voice, making sure they resonate with your audience.
Going Live Without Editing And Proofing Content:
If your social media content has grammatical errors or is off-message, it can damage your brand’s credibility. One minor typo in your post can convey carelessness to your followers.
Now, why does this matter? If your audience thinks you are careless with your posts, they may also assume you are negligent in other aspects of your business. Therefore, it helps to double-check every piece of content scheduled to be published. It’s a chance to make a good first impression on new viewers and a lasting impression on the current ones.
Just like how blogging is important in establishing a brand’s authority, proofing is crucial in ensuring your posts’ integrity.
Avoiding Negative Comments:
One unspoken rule of social media marketing is never ever to delete negative comments. If someone criticizes your products or services, do not remove them; instead, respond constructively. Not only does this reflect good customer service, but it also reassures anyone who stumbles on the comment that you care and actively try to resolve issues involving your brand.
Leaving a criticism without a reply also tends to reinforce the statement. As such, try to address the comment as constructively as possible. If other users come across the thread, they’ll see your willingness to solve customer concerns and ensure customer satisfaction.
Relying Too Much On Automation:
While automation is a good thing, going overboard with auto-posting is never a good idea. When you treat your social media pages like an RSS feed, your followers will flock elsewhere in a heartbeat, causing potential prospects to tune out.
An effort to keep fresh, innovative content must be made to engage your followers. You can use a good mix of mediums to create an impact, like images, videos, infographics, and slides. To make your content even more compelling, consider using graphic design tools for sharpened details and optimized colours. This way, you can keep your channel from going bland.
Failing To Track Your Performance:
One of the most common mistakes marketing beginners make is not tracking their social media performance. As a result, they end up getting fewer conversions, if not none at all. If you want your campaign to succeed, tracking your performance should be on the list of your priorities as it allows you to make strategic changes in your social media strategy as soon as possible.
It also provides insight into your campaign, which helps manage your goals. For instance, if an ad is not performing, you can stop right away and save your budget until it has been re-optimized.
In tracking your social media performance, keep in mind that every platform and digital marketing channel has its own analytics mechanism. Studying these analytics types can be a good starting point if you’re just starting. To minimize the time consumed in pulling metrics from these platforms, consider choosing a social media analytics tool that fits your needs and budget.
Hiding The People Behind The Brand:
If you’re hiding the people behind your brand, you’re making a mistake and harming your social media campaign in the process. You may generate leads, but you probably won’t develop much rapport with your prospects. Remember that often, consumers buy from companies that they know, like, and trust.
When you hide behind your profile, you might be preventing your brand from connecting with your followers while throwing up red flags with your prospects. By showing a hint of what happens behind the scenes or featuring employees and leaders sharing their stories authentically, you are more likely to capture customers’ attention and keep them engaged for the long term.
Conclusion:
Leveraging technology has become an indispensable ingredient in running a successful business. In particular, using social media to promote a specific brand and generate leads has become the new frontier in forging long-term relationships with customers.
As a business owner, it’s crucial to grasp how social media works. For one, this allows you to maximize your profits by increasing your visibility and connecting with a broader audience. At the same time, being aware of the social media planning mistakes beginners often make will help you avoid committing the blunders yourself, saving you from potential losses.
About the Author:Samantha Dacanay is an Online PR Specialist at Spiralytics, a Philippine agency for digital marketing services. Here, they help grow businesses through performance marketing and data science. As a young communications professional, she brightens the brands she handles with her creative and insight-driven thinking in various online and offline campaigns.
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