Do you make these 5 common social media mistakes?

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How good are you at social media? Not, how many followers do you have, or how many times do you tweet a day – but how much do you seriously consider social as a part of your overall marketing strategy and plan accordingly?

You might think that now you’ve set up your social media accounts, sent out your first posts and you’re starting to see a following building up, that that’s it, you can sit back and relax. You’ve built it – so they will come. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

There is a lot of white noise on social media so to succeed on social you need strategy, good content and a whole load of patience. And you also need to avoid the many rookie errors that so many brands commit unwittingly on social. To save you the embarrassment, I’ve put together 5 of the most common mistakes brands are always falling into. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

1. Wasting content

You spend lots of time and money writing your new blog post, hit publish – then let all of your customers and followers know via social media. So far, so good. But if that’s all you ever do, you might as well not even publish that blogpost in the first place.

A lot of businesses only promote new content, or new offers and services once – over fear of bombarding their follower base. And although constantly posting the same thing isn’t a great idea (we’ll get on to that later), what a lot seem to forget is that you’ll reach a new audience every time you post something. Different people are online at different times, so you’re not necessarily forcing the same message on the same followers. Experiment with varying times of the day, different angles and new hashtags, and see what works best for you. Just don’t limit the reach of your great content to one measly post, and then forget about it.

There are great tools out there that can help you to automate the way you post out like meetedgar.com – So only posting once anymore will not be tolerated! 🙂

2. Being greedy

A lot of companies think their social feeds are all about themselves, and them only – that they should be limited to purely posts about how great their company is or trying to sell and promote offer and service all the time. However, this can get boring for your followers pretty quickly, and they’re likely to look elsewhere to find something more interesting.

How to remedy this situation? Whenever you find a piece of content online that you find genuinely useful or entertaining, and that is relevant to your business – share it with your followers. “But how is that going to convert into sales?” I hear you ask. Remember: social media is at the very start of the conversion journey. I doubt that every customer who clicks on to your website from Twitter goes on to call you or make a purchase, because that’s just not its main purpose. It’s for engagement, conversation, connection. Sharing content builds your relationship with your followers, and they’ll thank you for it. As the saying goes, “share knowledge to gain knowledge”.

3. Missing the point

“I’ve got 60k followers on twitter– so I must be good at social media, right?” – this is one of the most common traps you can fall into. The amount of people following you is at best a vanity metric – yes, it may mean you’re popular, but if none of those accounts are interacting with you, they might as well not follow you. There are a lot of spammy accounts on social media these days, and if they make up the bulk of your follower count, 60k suddenly doesn’t sound so impressive anymore. Better to have just 100 active, genuine and engaged followers who actually care about your brand.

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The real metrics you need to be looking at are retweets, likes, and comments. Social media is for engagement and brand awareness most of all, and these are the figures which are going to let you know whether you’re actually achieving that.

4. Choosing the wrong platform for your industry

Social media moves pretty quickly. Every week, you’ll hear about a new trend, a new star, a new platform that you “just have to be on”.

But before you sign up to every new thing which comes your way, take the time to consider whether that platform is really right for your business. Is that where your target market hang out. So if you’re a plumber, Instagram might not be your best bet, but Facebook will connect you with local customers. Global security firm? Snapchat might just be a step too far, but LinkedIn will let you showcase your experience and expertise. However if you run a cat shelter or knit comfy cashmere sweaters Pinterest is your dream come true!

Putting a little thought into where your target market are in this way saves you time, money and effort in the long-run.

I see so many dead social profiles because people just thinK it’s the right thing to do! If you don’t plan to post regularly don’t bother! It’s a waste of your time and everyone else’s time that clicks through to check you out only to see a dead page.

5. Not being serious about social

Yes, social media might be less traditional and formal than other forms of marketing, such as emails or advertising. But that doesn’t mean you can be unprofessional or post content that isn’t relevant to your business.

Anything that gets posted from your business account should be relevant to your industry and true to your established tone of voice and brand values. Using slang, irrelevant hashtags and jumping in on controversial debates can make you look untrustworthy, unprofessional – and just a little bit desperate.

Thanks for reading. What do you think are the biggest no-nos on social media? Let us know in the comments below!

The social butterfly

Matt

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