There are some common mistakes that are easy to make if you don’t know what you’re doing online. Making posts on social media on a regular basis seems simple enough, but without a strategy and a little experience there are several mistakes that I’ve seen even the largest companies make.
Here are the top 10 mistakes to avoid in social media marketing!
1 No Strategy
Why is your business on social media? It seems like a simple enough answer: because that’s where current and potential customers are, or because everyone is online. You need to have a very specific goal in mind for your social media pages to get the most value out of the time spent per platform. Are you looking to drive more business to your brick and mortar location? Do you want customers to shop online? Or are you looking to build your brand and create more awareness? Your strategy will help guide you when it comes to the kind of posts you create, and how you call your customers to specific actions. Without a strategy, social media will give you little return on your investment.
2 Not Posting Valuable Content
Funny memes and gifs are great for post reach and to get engagement, but if that’s all your company posts online, customers might quickly lose interest in what your business actually does. This point also goes back to your strategy and planning out your posts in a specific and targeted manner. When you post content that relates to your audience and has some kind of value, either providing tips or more information on your products and services, customers will be more likely to trust your brand, interact with your posts, and ultimately purchase from your business.
3 Posting Links Incorrectly
This one is a personal pet peeve of mine! I’ve seen LARGE organizations make these mistakes. Every platform has a preferred way of posting links. On Twitter, use a url shortener to keep your tweet from looking cluttered. On Facebook, post a url in the caption, but DO NOT keep the photo that it automatically pulls from the page. Instead, post a custom image that is not linked to the url for better post performance. On Instagram, DO NOT (and I will repeat for emphasis) DO NOT post urls in posts. For the love of everything, please stop doing this. Links in posts are not clickable. Only links in your bio, or links in your stories if you have over 10k followers are clickable for users. Posting links in captions is pointless, frustrating, and did I mention pointless? Rant over.
4 Not Replying to Comments
If you have customers interacting with you, congratulations for doing something right! Engagement is a key area of increasing post reach and performance. Where you might go wrong though, is leaving comments ignored. Customers love feeling seen and heard, and interacting with businesses on a personal level. Replying to comments in the same day builds that trust factor with customers, especially if you’re answering their questions about your products or services.
5 Not Responding to Messages Quickly
This goes back to the trust factor between your customers and your business, but is also something that Facebook especially keeps track of. Before customers even send you a message on Facebook, they can check and see how quickly you reply to messages on your page. If your times are longer than an hour or two, they may not be so keen on hitting that “message” button. Try to keep your response times up, even after hours, with prompt and helpful replies. You can set up auto reply on Facebook to help with response times just to get basic customer info. But please do NOT use bots to do this on Instagram. Instagram will find you, and they will shut down or suspend your account.
6 Posting the Exact Same Post on all Platforms
This is another huge pet peeve of mine! Scheduling apps make it so easy to copy and paste the same verbiage across different platforms. However, not all content should be posted the exact same way across all platforms. On Instagram you want to use 10-15 different unique hashtags. On Facebook hashtags are pretty much worthless. On Twitter you have a character limit, so you want to post short, conversational tweets with maybe a couple of trending hashtags if it fits the content. Posting the same content is tacky, and shows your audience that you don’t care enough to customize your message to reach them on the platform of their preference.
7 Not Filling out Your Business Page Properly
If a potential client is unfamiliar with your business, they will take a look at your About section on any platform rather quickly after interacting with your posts. All of your pages should have a short, direct description of exactly who you are and what you offer. The wordier and more confusing your descriptions are, the more your audience will lose interest. And if you have no About info at all, customers will not trust your business or take the time to do some digging to learn more. Make sure, as with all things online, that your purpose and descriptions are clear and straight to the point.
8 Not Enough Interaction
In addition to spending time with your own customers, you need to interact with other businesses online as well. This is key for Instagram and Twitter especially! Even if it’s spending 15 minutes a day engaging on each platform, try to leave comments on relevant posts or engage with companies locally. The more you engage online, the more likely your business will be seen by others that you might not have reached otherwise. This is a strategy for gaining followers as well. If you’d like an example of a business that does this the best, follow Wendy’s account on Twitter. I promise you won’t be disappointed!
9 Ignoring or Deleting Negative Feedback
When you refuse to acknowledge negative feedback, it can create more problems and stronger negative emotions from the customers who left the comment or message. While some people are just trolls looking to be fed, it’s never a bad idea to reply with a positive, upbeat message, sharing your concern and contact info. Or sharing how you can solve their issue. It shows empathy to the frustrated customer and shows the rest of your audience that you care and are willing to help solve their problems.
10 Lack of Human Touch
This is a two-fold mistake. On one side, lack of a human touch refers to companies who use bots. Bots can be helpful, but overall are highly frowned upon on all platforms. If your activity online even resembles that of a bot, like posting too much or too quickly, you can get your account suspended. The other side of this coin is just having a cold, corporate page that has no personality, tone of voice, or anything interesting. Your audience wants to get to know you on a somewhat personal level and feel like they’re interacting with other human beings online. Having a dead corporate page is unappealing and will not get you the engagement or results you’re looking for, especially on Instagram and Twitter! Try to post valuable and engaging content, and even show some personal or employee photos of the team hard at work behind the scenes to connect with your customers.
Has your business made any of these mistakes online?
If so, not to worry! Hopefully these tips are helpful moving forward. If you have any questions or need help managing your social media accounts, feel free to reach out to me and let’s chat!
