Social Media Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make

Social media is, undeniably, the strongest collection of platforms when it comes to marketing online. More people are connected to at least one social media account than ever before and it offers businesses an unparalleled level of direct access. However, every social media platform is a multi-faceted discipline, meaning that marketing on them incorrectly is actually fairly easy. For that reason, we’re going to look at some of the mistakes you want to avoid as best as possible.

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Posting too much, too often

There is some benefit to making sure that you’re posting regularly. A feed that updates rarely does not leave a good image for customers who expect businesses to be there to respond to their needs at almost any time of the day. Furthermore, there is no denying that a higher frequency of posts means that your account is more likely to be seen throughout the day. However, if you’re aiming for quantity over quality, you are going to start annoying your audience members more than anything else. Try to space out your posts using social media scheduling tools to ensure that you’re posting often enough but not too often and that your posts are more evenly spaced out to times that they’re more likely to be seen.

Posting text only

Text posts can help you deliver a lot of information in an effective way, but a feed that is only text will fail to engage users as regularly as they should. There is plenty of data to support the fact that images and videos tend to get more clicks and engagements on average. Aside from using relevant imagery and posting interesting videos, you can use infographic generation tools to turn your written content into a more visually elaborate and generally interesting form.

Only posting your own posts

The “social” part of social media is an important distinction that separates it from advertising and other direct marketing methods. It’s not a one-way channel, it’s a communal experience. As such, there is a lot of goodwill to be had by sharing posts from both your own community as well as other adjacent brands. Similarly, there is a lot of bad will to be fostered by having a feed that doesn’t offer their platform to their community now and then. Make sure to curate content from other users, as well as to share relevant posts from members of your own audience to benefit from more positive social proof.

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Using the wrong social media platforms

There is a convincing case to be made for the benefits of all of the major social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, LinkedIn, and so on. Each of them may be able to offer some value to your business, but trying to manage all of them is simply not possible for the majority of businesses. As such, you need to prioritize and decide which platforms are most valuable to you. For instance, Facebook and Twitter have the largest userbases, meaning that most businesses will want a presence on at least one of them. However, others fit more niche needs, such as how LinkedIn tends to better suit business 2 business companies who are looking to speak to an audience of professionals, while the visual nature of Instagram makes it a better fit for lifestyle products that sell on aesthetic, like fashion and home businesses.

Being unfamiliar with your platform

Aside from using the wrong platform, there are also inherent risks to using platforms that you don’t know how to leverage effectively. You can learn to use any social media platform as an effective marketing tool, of course. However, if you want to hit the ground running and start building an effective marketing strategy, choosing one that you’re unfamiliar with can hold you back. Does this mean you should not use the platforms best suited to your business simply because you’re not familiar with them, however? No. With the help of teams like a Facebook marketing agency, you can ensure that you’re still making great use of a platform, even if you don’t know how to use it well. By watching and learning, you can develop the skills to better use those platforms on your own, too.

Not making use of your analytics

Are you blindly posting into the aether, hoping that your posts will stick without any ability to intuit what might or might not be successful? If so, why? Practically every social media channel available (or at least those that businesses most commonly use) provide a lot of data. Web-users produce an immense amount of data every minute. A lot of this data, at least the most relevant data, is collected and collated through analytics tools that come free with most social media accounts. These analytics can help you watch not only trends and important marketing metrics over time, but the performance of the individual posts that you make, allowing you to better see what does and does not work for your audience.

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Never boosting your posts

The cost-effectiveness of social media is one of its undeniable strengths. Most platforms are thoroughly free to use, create a profile, and post on. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no benefit to occasionally spending a little money on your own social media presence. If you have a post that is doing very well and generating a lot of traffic towards your website or helping more customers convert, then you can pay to boost it, ensuring that it appears more widely to users outside your own page. You can use targeting functions to ensure that it reaches those most relevant to your business, as well. If you never boost your posts, you could miss a big opportunity to reach even more people.

Complete mastery of social media might be nigh-impossible for the average business owner, but you can at least learn to avoid some of the biggest mistakes made by newcomers to the field and ensure that your efforts are more likely to pay-off right from the get-go.

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