Isn’t social media marketing something that everyone is doing? But doing it right is what matters. You can only benefit from the potential of social media marketing if you devise your strategy wisely. Take this instance. If your internet is 100 Mbps fast, but you are unable to download or stream anything, what’s the use? Similarly, you need to come up with a solid and effective social media marketing strategy and not just a strategy to promote your brand.
Who doesn’t want to jump on the bandwagon of ensuring their strong presence on various social networks? Simply everyone! And the reason is pretty simple – the crowd is there. But, you need to engage the audience effectively. Most of the marketers are making social media marketing mistakes. And this brings the following questions to light:
- Why are certain social media marketing activities unsuccessful?
- Why are some Instagram and Facebook pages incredibly popular? And why not others?
- Are your competitors giving you a tough competition and doing better on social media? If yes, why?
To err is human. And marketers in social media are no exception. But you can learn to improve. If you don’t want to see a drop in your follower count and revenue stream, do not make the following mistakes.
7 Things to Avoid in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
- Failure to Create a Solid Strategy for Social Media Marketing.
- Not Knowing and Focusing on Your Target Audience.
- Inability to Deal with Negative Feedback on Social Media.
- Excessive Promotion.
- Inability to Diversify.
- Very Little or No Interaction.
- Posting Monotonous Content Needlessly
Let’s discuss them.
Failure to Create a Solid Strategy for Social Media Marketing
Devising a strategy is the first step. And if you are unable to do that, it’s a bad start. You need to have a solid strategy for your social media marketing and then go further with it. Invest time and effort in creating an effective social media marketing strategy. You make a profile on various social media platforms, load the needed information, put up some great stuff, and then you disappear.
After this super launch, people lose interest because your page has become a barren land. Your followers wonder what’s gone wrong with the page and why are they getting no answers to their queries. This is how you make your presence on social media a flop show! This is not how you should go about it. While devising your social media strategy, you need to know your:
- Goals
- Tactics
- Target audience
- Team
- Time investment
Social media has the capability of sucking the productive hours of you and your team. Therefore, having a concrete marketing plan and sticking to it is very important.
Not Knowing and Focusing on Your Target Audience
You don’t want to waste your time on fruitless and useless endeavors. Therefore, you need to focus on your targeted audience. You don’t just need followers, you need the ones who are interested in your brand and can pave a way to conversions. You are probably working very hard but if you are not targeting the right audience, you will not get the desired results.
Inability to Deal with Negative Feedback on Social Media
Every second brand makes this mistake. There are different ways that brands react whenever they see a negative comment popping up. Some make a very lame excuse, some react badly, and some make formal apologies. Their biggest fear is having their reputation spoilt. Instead of ignoring these comments, take them as opportunities to improve. A negative comment is a great chance to engage and communicate with the person who sent this feedback. You get a clear picture of your product’s user experience and should improve it accordingly. You should:
- Take the negative feedback seriously because that’s what a complaining customer wants.
- Address their issue and work on making the user experience better. Don’t ignore their comments. Always reply.
- Take the long feedbacks as detailed insight into your product or service.
- Don’t send formal apologies. Instead, all they need is an assurance that they will have an improved product next time.
Excessive Promotion
Do you know why social media is so popular? Because it is all about communication and socialization. What people hate the most on these platforms is excessive promotional content. They simply detest adverts. If you are spending too much time on creating promotional content, you are doing yourself a disservice. You need to be subtle about promoting your brand on social media.
Inability to Diversify
Take a look at the kind of content that you are posting on your social media channels. Don’t expect to engage your audience with self-promotional and monotonous content. You need to incorporate diversity in your content. Here are some suggestions:
- You can post your own articles, blog posts, photos, and videos.
- Share links to external sources, which has relevant content and can interest your followers.
- Don’t hesitate to retweet and share content from the other brands in your niche.
Very Little or No Interaction
This is a common mistake too. Brands work on updating their profiles but they hardly interact and communicate with their clients and followers. This lowers the value of your presence on social media. Your followers will not trust you and you will be unable to make a relationship with them. Remember, social media is all about engagement and conversations!
Posting Monotonous Content Needlessly
Some so-called online gurus would advise you to post content frequently to keep your audience engaged. This leads to brands posting low-value content. For instance, if you are promoting Spectrum Triple Play deals, you can’t go on posting similar posts about their features and charges. The hack only works if the content is engaging and amazing. Otherwise, people will ignore it.
