10 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Social media marketing can be a great way to promote your business. However, it could be a difficult one to adopt, do correctly and maintain. If your posting is targeted and timed well, it can bring many visitors to your website and allow you to build a solid followers list.

However, one very poor social media post could instantly damage your company's reputation and cause you to lose followers. Before things go wrong, let's first talk about the most common mistakes to avoid!

1. Focusing on increasing the number of followers/paying for fake followers.

There are many creative social media marketing shortcuts available out there. However, any strategy that involves taking shortcuts would most likely cost you more time and more money. For example, many marketing consultants or agencies would offer a guarantee of a certain number of followers in an unreasonably short period of time. That almost always means that the agency is using spam-like tactics to get more traffic (visits) to your social media networks.

Another terrible way of getting more followers is by paying for those in bulk. These are usually fake followers (paid to create fake accounts), which are not reading any of your posts (guaranteed!), and therefore, not helping with your social media analytics and don't provide any value.

2. Not posting consistently and regularly

Abandoned social media profiles are one of the best ways to earn a bad brand reputation. It makes your company look unreliable and unable to follow-through and commit. You can’t expect results if your posts are not consistent. By posting once a month or even once a week you don’t allow your prospective clients to find you and engage with you.

3. Posting only company-centered content (promotional content)

Pushing your brand too hard and forgetting to add a customer-centered content is a true way to do a poor social media marketing. People do not want to hear over and over again how great your product is and how it’s way better than your competitor’s. We don’t mean that you should never post promotional content regarding your products and services. There is definitely time and place for those. However, try to first connect with your audience and share content that is adding value (that is interesting) to your potential customers, and therefore, engages them into a conversation. By showing that you care about their interests, whether or not they buy your product, you establish a more loyal fan base.

4. Focusing on too many channels 

New social media networks appear every year. That, however, does not mean you should be creating a profile for your company on all of them. Most companies tend to focus their marketing efforts on three social media networks. The most popular ones are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. However, what networks you use should really depend on your niche or industry. For example, if your company offers a professional advice, consulting or services, LinkedIn might be the best choice. If your main demographic uses heavily images and graphics, Instagram and Pinterest might be the better choice. We suggest you start with couple of social networks and see whether you are able to keep up the regular pots and increase from there.

5. Not having a strategy 

Running a social media campaign without a strategy is a big waste of time and resources. Know your goals (“acquiring 100 followers per month” could be a good start) and target audience (“women between the age of 18-50” for example) and what they need (“new hobby, get healthy, lose weight”). Invest the time to research them and what they are interested in. Then find a way to measure your efforts by using analytics. If you are unable to do so, you could be setting your social media efforts for failure.

6. Using the same message for all social media platforms

Cross posting, or posting the same exact message, in all social media networks could create few problems:

• Different platforms have different features and different audience. We always suggest tailoring your work to the appropriate audience. Posting the same message is not tailoring.
• When a fan catches you posting the same exact message on couple of different platforms, it could appear that you are being “lazy”.
• If all your social media messages look the same, why would your consumers follow you on all channels? Give them incentive to follow you on all platforms by customizing your posts!

7. Posting but not checking for spelling errors

We hate to go there but this one is important. Posting with grammatical errors can make you look unprofessional and inexperienced. Be sure you proofread before going live.

8. Posting too frequently and appearing spamming or annoying

You potential customers are exposed to thousands of social media messages every day. Flooding their feeds could be annoying and spammy. How much posting you should do depends on the type of channel you are posting on (3-4 posts per day could be perfectly acceptable on Twitter, however, doing the same thing on LinkedIn could appear as spam).

9. Doing posts manually 

Doing posts one by one is a very time-consuming task. Also, on some days you might be busier than usual and not have time to post on social media. These are some of the reasons why social media marketers share their content automatically by using Hubspot, Social Publish, NextScripts and Hootsuite. There are many other similar scheduling tools and plug-ins that exist and it’s always a great idea to research and see which one would work best for your social media marketing.

10. Not interacting with your audience

Many businesses make the mistake of posting frequent social media messages, however, they fail to reply when a follower engages with them. Putting in effort replying to your customers’ questions and concerns would add value and build relationships with them. Make an effort to allocate time to do that at least 2-3 times a week.

Bottom line: Social media marketing is a science. There are few basics every business needs to master to avoid potential online presence disasters. Start with clear plan, research your target audience and their needs, post regularly and deliver am amazing content. Knowing these basics will get you started.

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References:

Forbes Magazine. 5 Fatal Mistakes That Will Kill Your Social Media Marketing Campaign. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/10/08/5-fatal-mistakes-that-will-kill-your-social-media-marketing-campaign/2/#2dcf3ff8e121

Social Times. 9 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes. Retrieved from: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/9-common-social-media-marketing-mistakes-infographic/206570