8 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes

 

With around 80 million small to a medium-sized business pages on Facebook, there are many business pages to serve as good examples of common social media marketing mistakes.

Your social media presence is an important part of your marketing mix so avoiding tainting your companies name online is critical. We have compiled a list of 8 common social media marketing mistakes made by businesses and how to avoid them.

 

1. Going all-in without a plan:

Most people don’t go overseas without a plan, so why would you jump into your marketing without one either?

Make sure you and your team have a social media marketing strategy. This will help to keep any social media activities thoughtful, relevant and successful.

What should be included your plan?

• Goals (make sure they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant & timely)
• Target Audience (make sure this isn’t just an idea, get real evidence)
• Tactics (are you trying to drive sales, awareness or engagement?)
• Time investment ( how much time can you give – be realistic, you can’t do it all!)
• Team (who is going what, where and when)

 

2. And that’s that 

Just posting on social media doesn’t just improve your brand off the bat, or tell you much about the effectiveness of your posts. 

Make sure you are reviewing your facebook analytics; who are commenting, liking, sharing, is this better or worst than last week? Why may this be?

Just because it worked once doesn’t mean it will work again, can you do it better? Failing to experiment through A/B testing can reduce your shortcomings and you can miss out on opportunities to expand.

Most social media sites and posting platforms will provide analytics in a simple and clear way, so there really isn’t an excuse. 

 

3. Always wearing a suit and tie 

As a business, you always want to paint your business in a good light, which is good, but it is often done in a way that produces boring, stale, too formal and sales-driven content.

People interact with a business on social media to get to know and mingle with the human side of your business, it really is called social media for a reason.

Don’t just post-sale pitches, stock images or content off your website. Be relatable, share behind the scenes pictures and information, funny and real moments, fails and highs! 

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should start swearing and sharing crude jokes, you still need to show the best sides of your business. But perhaps you don’t always need to be wearing a suit and tie and speaking like your meeting the queen in every post.   

 

4. You might as well be a door-to-door salesperson 

Only posting self-promotional content is a quick way to lose your following. If your audience wanted to get constantly sold to they would watch TV or listen to the radio, why do you think Netflix and Spotify are so popular!?

Social media can be a great place to create leads and increase sales, but that doesn’t mean that every post has to be a promotional post. 

 A good method to use the 80/20 rule. 80% value posts, which can be things like evergreen content that gives inspiration and ideas. 20% sales posts, make sure with these posts you are selling the problem you solve – not the product.

 

5.You might have thought the empty title was a typo, but it isn’t.

Not replying, interacting or ‘blanking’ your audience decreases the value of your social media presence. 

Again it’s called social media for a reason, people engage with you because they want to. So make sure to like, reply and engage in the most human way possible to comments and interaction on your social media pages. 

 

6. Article article article article

Have you ever been to a page that post article after article with no other variety of content? I have and I can tell you now it was B.O.R.I.N.G, it’s not a page anyone wants to follow. 

Yes, you may be adding value by providing useful information, but people follow a company for a variety of reasons.

Make sure you’re providing a range of content from articles, sale pitches, testimonials, facts, behind the scenes and so on. That way you can be sure you are providing a mix of content that will appeal to all your different audience types.

 

7. See you in 3 months time, babe 

I’m pretty sure you would break up a relationship too if your partner stopped interacting with you for 3 months.

It’s the same with a business, it’s a relationship, not posting anything for months then randomly spamming is a sure way to lose your audience. 

Make sure to create a plan and steadily post content throughout the week with the 80/20 rule in mind. 

The same goes with posting too much, a study done by Hubspot found that pages with less than 10,000 followers experienced a 50% drop in engagement per post if they posted more than once per day.

How much should you really post? Well, the answer is different for different platforms. At a minimum, we suggest you should post no less than 3 times per week on any given platform.

 

8. Same same

Stop thinking all social media sites are the same, they are not.

If you are actively reviewing your analytics you may find that a post on facebook and the very same post on Instagram can get considerably different results.

Your followers expect different content, copy and formats dependent on the social media platform. While all social media platforms are about being social they each have varying demographics, behaviours, interests. 

While your link to an article may fit perfectly into a facebook feed, links in captions and comments don’t appear on Instagram.

Make sure you know each platform well, what works, what doesn’t and tailor your content to what your viewers expect to see. 

Have something to add to our list of common social media marketing mistakes that you loathe seeing brands make?
Pop it in the comments below and let’s help rid the world of anti-social media.