Businesses, both big and small, need to have a social media presence. Most companies know that social media can play a crucial role in generating leads and building brand awareness.
However, many startups and small businesses struggle to grow consistently on social media. Often, this isn’t due to lack of effort but the common social media marketing mistakes they make.
Whether it’s missing the point of social networks or oversaturating your content, small business marketers sometimes miss the mark. Before starting to advertise your business, it’s best to learn these 8 social media mistakes you’ll want to avoid when marketing your small company to customers.
1. Creating Many Social Media Accounts
Signing up for too many social media platforms─ especially when starting out─ can be a recipe for disaster. For small businesses, it’s more effective and much easier to master just a few platforms before branching out to more.
If you rush to create a presence on every social media platform out there and start publishing incoherently on all of them, you get confused. Then, you may consider abandoning some of your platforms, making things worse. This kind of behavior does nothing but boost your mistrust level with your audience, which is never good for business.
2. Not Having a Social Media Marketing Strategy
In Benjamin Franklin’s words, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” Businesses without a social media marketing plan often find it hard to provide useful content to their audiences.
Without a clear social media strategy, you’ll find it challenging to know what to post, when to post, and what your audience likes and wants. Communication with customers might start to feel disjointed and confusing. A good social media strategy includes providing useful and engaging content that inspires action.
3. Deleting Negative Comments
Do your business a favor and be transparent. One of the common social media marketing mistakes small businesses make is deleting negative feedback. You need to show your audiences that you’ve got nothing to hide to build trust in your company
It’s best not to delete any negative comments and instead respond appropriately and as soon as possible. Negative feedback online provides an opportunity for you to engage with the user who left the comment and turn everything positive. Be respectful to whoever makes a comment and address the issue head-on.
4. Failing to Create Brand Consistency
What’s so unique about your brand? Let it shine through all your content. If you care about building a powerful brand that lasts, you need to focus on the consistency of your brand.
Don’t confuse consistency with monotony—if you’re going to repurpose your content make sure you do it appropriately.
You should switch up your content, test different formats, and maintain variety. All the while, your content should remain consistent with your tone of voice, brand mission, and general look and feel. Being consistent also includes keeping your promises.
5. Buying Followers
While all social media networks don’t allow users to buy followers, the urge to buy followers might become more if you don’t have the numbers. Although several thousand followers can be purchased for a few dollars, you don’t want to go that route. Instagram and Facebook algorithms hate this activity.
In the past few years, there were so many fake profiles selling followers that even official ads attracted fake likes. Due to this, platforms like Facebook was forced to deactivate more than 2 billion fake accounts. Also, remember your ultimate goal is getting conversions, not building a subscriber count.
6. Promoting Yourself Too Much
Social media is typically about socializing and communicating. Not many people like promotional content ─ most people hate being sold to. If you decide to spend most of your time promoting yourself, you could lose social media followers.
Since your business needs to sell, use promotion subtly. While it’s okay to post promotional material now and then, the more engaging your posts are, the more sales you’ll attract. Don’t forget to set aside some of your time to interact with other people’s content, add value, and not just push yours down every follower’s throat.
7. Not Connecting and Networking
If you have many random followers who have little to contribute and don’t embody your ideal audience you will not yield the expected results. You want to draw in and engage potential customers, professionals, and peers with similar views and interests. These are the kind of people who will likely contribute to the success of your marketing efforts.
Make sure that your interactions are meaningful. That’s the true meaning of networking ─ adding value to relationships. Always find time to engage in discussions and send personalized messages.
By doing this, more people will likely pay attention to the things you say.
8. Following Every Trend
It’s not that you shouldn’t publish a buzzworthy post, but there’s a specific time and place to be trendy. If you’re a tech company, for example, posting about the latest baking style and over-capitalizing on movements to appear “youthful” can confuse your audience.
Jumping on social media trends and posting irrelevant content is perceived as a gimmick. It plants you in a sea of other people who jump on the bandwagon. By blindly doing what every other business out there is doing, you’re devaluing your unique voice and pushing away prospects who followed you for your individuality.
Trends are still useful in social media. But first, know what everyone is talking about and decide whether or not it’s relevant for your small business. If the trend seems to benefit your business, use thoughtful ways to join the conversation.
Be Sure to Avoid These Social Media Marketing Mistakes
Because billions of people use social media each day, social media marketing remains one of the best ways to expose your company to a large audience. However, only a few small businesses do well when it comes to using social media in the right way.
As you can tell from the list above, all of these social media marketing mistakes can be avoided. All it takes is understanding your mistakes so you can handle them.
For assistance with mapping out an effective social media strategy for your brand, feel free to contact us today.