“Social Media” has been a Buzz Term for years now, constantly changing and transforming how businesses are promoted, and it’s here to stay. Some businesses manage to leverage huge brand reach while others fail to reap the rewards promised by social media.
We’ve compiled 8 Common Social Media mistakes and solutions to help you capitalize on the potential of social media.
1. Using direct ROI to measure your social media success
Given the viral spread of crazy Korean dances and the internet’s love for finding an unlikely hero, it’s understandable why people have such high expectations of social media. However, the benefits of social media can’t be measured with crude data, especially for small businesses.
2. Not having a profile on all major social networks
Search engines are now using social signals to determine organic search ranking. Not having a presence may be causing you to miss out on that first page spot.
3. Not being active on the above networks.
When potential customers are looking at your profile, chances are they have your competitors opened up in other tabs. A lack of activity will be an immediate deterrent and cause them to move on to your competitor. Find sources that can supply you with industry-specific content your customers will enjoy, and use software that will enable you to post while you’re sleeping. This will mean your profile is ‘awake’ 24/7, capturing potential customers attention at all hours of the day.
4. Sharing things that aren’t worth sharing
Be careful of what you automate. Blog posts should be shared across multiple platforms, however re-tweets, re-follows and “thank yous” should be handled by a person. This way, you’ll be able to determine which follows, tweets, and interactions hold value and which are being automatically generated.
5. Thinking “What’s in it for me” rather than “how can I help my followers?”
Customers are more likely to want to engage with you after they’ve seen how helpful you’ve been in the past. Rather than use social platforms purely for self-promotion, use it to help out your customers and demonstrate your added value.
6. Not having an end goal in mind
Just like our 4th grade teachers told us, the best way to succeed is to know what you’re striving for. Different goals will require a different social media strategy. For example; a brand that wants to increase their website traffic will require a different kind of presence than bands who are looking to prompt inquiries from potential customers.
7. Failing to inject any personality
You’ve already put a lot of time and money into differentiating your business from the competition, so don’t lose that online by becoming a social media robot. A dimension of personality is already lost in the online world, so make sure to inject some personality into your posts to keep readers engaged and eager.
8. Having an inconsistent presence
There are two types of social media inconsistency
i) Frequency of posts
ii) The kind of material being shared.
If someone chooses to follow you based on one post a few weeks ago, you’ll lift their engagement and strengthen their ties to your brand by consistently meeting their expectations.
Sources: Search Engine Watch Social Hire
