6 Common Mistakes to Avoid when
Using Social Media for Marketing
There is no doubt that social media marketing reigns supreme when it comes to putting your brand out there in the world. However, there can be a few mistakes that you might make along the way that could put your brand image in a difficult position.
This is why it’s so important to take good care when it comes to observing and understanding how these platforms work.
For starters, it’s always important to maintain a certain image on your social media pages. A great way to do so would be to purchase likes and followers that are genuine.
Users generally tend to follow pages that have a higher number of Instagram likes and followers because such numbers create an element of trust among them.
Whether you are only just starting to get around social media for business or are well experienced in the field, it’s always important to notice and draw lessons from some of the most common marketing mistakes that can be made on these platforms.
This is why we have rounded up six common social media marketing mistakes that you should take note of.
Not Having a Thorough Plan
Although social media is quite intuitive to get around, you will always need a good amount of planning before you make use of this visual platform for your brand communication.
By planning, we mean drafting a social media marketing strategy that can ensure meeting your brand’s short-term and long-term marketing goals.
This is where most businesses fail to make a difference. While they continue posting content for their customers, they somehow don’t move further up the ladder of widening their user base or increasing their reach. The reason is simple – they don’t give it much thought.
However, when it comes to your business, it’s important to set a goal that is realistic, measurable, and most importantly, specific.
Once your goals are drafted, the next step involves sticking with them through and through!
Not Targeting the Right Audience
Marketing strategies and consistent posting are great. But it’s equally important to know ‘who’ you are going to be targeting in the first place.
It’s worth noting that a majority of Instagram users fall between the ages of 18 to 34. This means most of them are from the millennial generation. Taking the age group as an example of a target audience, what kind of content would work for these users? Perhaps they’re particularly fond of memes? What can your brand do in such a case? Maybe it could create a part of its content centered around memes?
Apart from the given example, there are several ways in which brands can study and understand the audience they want to target and create their marketing strategies around the needs of these targets.
Not Engaging Enough
The rule of social media is simple – the more you engage with your audience, the more likely you are to get them to appreciate you or even buy from you.
Once you understand your target audience and how they talk about you on social media forums, you can start working on plans that can boost your engagement.
You can run contests, respond to your customers’ comments, and (if possible) messages, interact with your followers by going live on Instagram – the possibilities are endless!
Another way to increase user engagement can be through maintaining an impressive brand image by making your social media handle look popular everywhere. For this purpose, companies like Leoboost are here to provide authentic service.
Going Overboard with Promotions
While using social media platforms for promotion and advertising is important, care should be taken about not overstuffing people’s feeds with promotional posts all the time.
If your feed reflects nothing else apart from only the brand-centered posts, your target audience will grow tired of keeping up with it. This is why it becomes important to follow a pattern.
For this purpose, you can follow the 80/20 rule.
This rule simply means that 80% of your content should be non-promotional, meaning you can post other engaging things like facts, quotes, memes, videos, etc to keep your audience engaged. On the other hand, 20% of your content should be purely promotional.
If you want to understand what type of content suits your audience the best, it’s always recommended to study the social media platforms’ insights feature that provides analytics on your customer behaviors.
Mishandling Negative Comments
You might be unprepared for negative comments that could plague your feed.
However, what matters the most is the way you save your brands’ reputation by responding to them in a succinct and professional manner.
A lethal social media mistake would be using the wrong tone as a response to negative comments. A simple approach to this would be to consider the comment of the customers that highlights your flaws and ensure that they never face it again. The best course of action for trolls or toxic would be to just ignore them.
It is also not recommended to delete any negative comments. Brands have previously engaged with negative comments which never worked out well for them. This is because they then ended up deleting the whole thread out of frustration.
Instead of such inauthenticity, you can show your audience that you care and are willing to bring the change demanded of you by responding to them professionally.
Posting Monotonous Content
With over 100 million posts per day, Instagram is the noisiest social media platform. And if you, as a brand don’t keep your content interesting enough to keep your audience hooked, it can be hard to survive.
This is why it’s important to understand your audience and create unique content that will not only keep your brand image intact but will also keep your followers engaged.
Just like many things, creating a social media presence isn’t a piece of cake and it’s only natural to make a few of these mistakes. But if left unnoticed, they could end up making a mess out of your brand’s marketing. This is why it’s important to not only create a thorough social media marketing strategy but also stay wary of the factors that could lead to your brand’s decline.
