As more and more businesses are expanding themselves online, social media platforms have started to pose as an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Many modern and small businesses use social media to grow their audience while generating new leads.
However, simply being active on social media is not enough. There are many ways to do things correctly to ensure the growth of your business. Although, if you are making any of the following 5 mistakes, you may need to re-evaluate your options and act differently.
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1. Never engage with your audience in conversation
It’s called social media for a reason – and that doesn’t just apply to your audience, but you as well. Sure, it might not be possible to respond to every single comment in a meaningful way; however, if you never engage with your audience in a conversation, then eventually, they won’t even bother trying.
Would you?
Imagine you invite a friend to your home for dinner, and they politely decline; then you ask them out the next week, and they say that they are busy again; and then you try again for a third time, and “something else has come up.”
How long do you suppose you’ll keep trying until you sack them off entirely?
Be active and engage with your audience – you’ll have far more success online if you do.
2. Promoting yourself too much
Don’t make the mistake of going on about your brand and business too much. Yes, you have products/services to sell and a business to run, but if all you do on social media is talk shop, you’re going to turn a lot of your prospects off.
The general rule of thumb is posting with an 80 / 20 rule:
- 80% informational/entertaining posts.
- 20% promotional.
In other words, 1 in 5 of your posts should be an advert or a promotion, or a new product launch. Every other post should be fun and engaging, and informational.
Commit to that 80 / 20 rule, and you’ll notice far more engagement from your audience. That, and when you do post something promotional, they’ll be more inclined to give it some consideration.
3. Treating all social media platforms the same
If you create a post and then share the exact same thing on Facebook, Insta, Twitter, and LinkedIn, then you are largely wasting your time.
Each social media platform is vastly different, including the primary demographic active on the site and the type of content that performs best.
- Write a blog post >
- Share the blog post on Facebook >
- Take snippets from the blog post and put them into Tweets >
- Screenshot those Tweets and share them on Instagram >
- Transcribe the blog post into a YouTube video or podcast >
- Take snippets of the YouTube video and upload them to TikTok >
- And so on…
Mix it up! It doesn’t take all that much work to repurpose a single piece of content, and in doing so, you’ll be far more successful on social media.
4. Absence of long-term strategy
Are you aware of what marketing strategy you should follow, or are you just going along the flow? Are you always posting without any prior planning?
Failing to have a strategy in place is a huge mistake, and posting on social media without one is largely pointless.
- Research the market.
- Know your audience.
- Look at your competitors.
- Define your long-term objectives (and how you plan to measure those goals).
5. Failing to track your progress with the appropriate analytics tools
You must track every single post that you create. Look at the numbers. Which posts get the most engagement? What days did you see more shares? Which times are your audiences most talkative?
If you want to gain actionable insights that you can use to refine your social media marketing strategy and get the most out of each and every single post, then you must leverage the appropriate analytics tools and measure accordingly.
Data analytics is everything! Don’t let yours go to waste.
Final thoughts: Hire the pros
If you can set the above 5 mistakes right, you’ll be well on your way to being more successful on social media. However, fulfilling all the requirements and crafting a successful strategy is not everyone’s cup of tea.
However, hiring a social media marketing agency might work if you feel lost and want to get a way out. But before you make any decision, ensure that the agency is result driven and has had an excellent client reviews rate in the past.
It is no wonder to struggle in the start with so much competition in the online market. Getting yourself a professional helping hand can do wonders for your business to grow on social media, while you can focus on the services provided or the quality of your product.
