11 Horrible Mistakes You Are Making With Social Media Marketing

Right now, with the pandemic forcing many businesses to change their mode of operation and marketing strategies, all businesses are going online to leverage the power of online marketing, most especially the use of social media. 

There is a huge spike in the consumer usage of social media, Facebook users in the U.S. increased by 2.5%, from February to March 2020, equaling 233,5000,000 in the United States, and it will only increase as time passes.

Therefore, businesses are adapting to the new normal, which largely involves connecting to their consumers through social media.

Social media marketing became an integral part of a business marketing strategy over the past few years due to it's undeniable benefits to businesses, 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been effective for their business.

It has made increasing brand awareness easier than ever as people now live online with 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers being active social media users.

Brands are taking the opportunities provided by social media with 90 percent of U.S. businesses using social media for marketing and promotions.

However, most brands are struggling with social media marketing, a study by Smart Insights revealed that 80% of companies online are under the impression that they deliver exceptional social media customer service, while only 8% of their customers say they agree.

Therefore, it's imperative to know what you should avoid in your social media marketing plans to prevent your business from getting into the bad records of your consumers, and have a failed marketing campaign.

These mistakes are easy to make but costly, hence the need to be aware of them.

A lot of businesses are already on social media, and the last thing you want is to indulge in anything that will take away the limelight from your business.

These mistakes will prevent you from achieving your intended results and make you feel like your efforts are fruitless, leaving you feeling frustrated.

The constant changes in social media networks algorithms already make it more difficult than usual to succeed on social media, you don't want to be the one contributing to your own undoing by making costly missteps that could have been avoided on social media.

Let's dive into these mistakes (Ps, take a sip of coffee every time I say mistakes).

1. Targeting Nobody

One of the worst nightmares of social media marketing is having your followers filled with people that are not interested in your products and services, it's like verbally speaking to a deaf person, they can't hear you.

You need to know who your target audience is so that you can hone and design your social media marketing to appeal to your potential customers. 

Take time to really get specific on whom your services and products are meant for, create a buyer persona if you don't have one already.

This will save you time and money, when you know your target audience, you can then choose the right social media network for your brand, your message style, brand tone, and more.

In this day and age, personalization wins, 88% of U.S. marketers reported seeing measurable improvements due to personalization, with more than half reporting a lift greater than 10%.

People love brands that get them and resonate with their pain points, not creepy or stylish personalization, hard pass, know what they want, not invade their privacy.

Put out content that really aligns to your buyer personas, always speak to your audience with stories that they can relate with.

If you just seek any type of follower, then you will saturate your audience with people that don't bring real value to your brand.

2. Non-Existent Social Media Marketing Plan

You opened a social media account and you start to post content about your products and services randomly, you have no plan or strategy in place. No goals, no KPIs to track, no content plan or schedule, no copywriting plan, no analytic tool…. no nothing.

Now that's a full proof plan to fail and be all over the place. Without a social media strategy, you will survive on guesswork and will be heading nowhere since you post content with no intended goal.

Social media is more than just the fancy pictures and product descriptions, there's a whole lot that goes into the art of social media marketing.

For example, your captions under your posts should be creative and approached strategically, questions like:

• What hashtags are you going to use?
• Who is your target audience? 
• What specific actions do you want your followers to take? Gain more website traffic, increase in followers count?
• What color palette do you want to use?
• How often do you intend to post in a week?
• Should you work with influencers? And more.

should be addressed.

All these are issues that should be planned beforehand, only then can you even know what to track or can you hope to achieve intended results.

Also, note that following a social media guide that has been built for all businesses cannot pass or serve as your social media marketing strategy, you need to go ahead and create one that is suitable for your brand, the guide is as its name implies, to guide you.

With a social media strategy, you get to track what works and what doesn't, it shows that you know what you are doing and enables you to be consistent.

3. Being Everywhere

So, you have an account on LinkedIn, just started posting on Twitter, while juggling both Facebook and Instagram and now you are thinking of jumping on Tiktok. 

Whoa! Slow down, you don't have to be everywhere, it reduces the quality of your brand content on all platforms, being everywhere is like being nowhere. 

Here's a newsflash: Not all networks are suited for your brand, what are the demographics of these networks? Does it fit your target audience? Do you really need to be on that platform? Can it promote your products? Is that platform worth your efforts?

Critically researching which social media network is really worth your time, and deserves more attention is a great move for a successful social media marketing campaign.

This is not to say that you can't flourish on all networks, but don't just jump all in at once or think you have to be on all of these networks.

It is more effective to get solid on one or two networks and put out quality content, build relationships, and familiarize yourself with them before getting into another.

I am not saying you should romanticize a platform but don't spread yourself too thin, depending on your brand capacity, can it really put out consistent quality content on these platforms?

Doing something because everyone is doing it is a dangerous move for your brand.

4. Having The Same Approach For All Networks

Here's a common scenario: A brand creates a piece of content and they go ahead to copy and paste it across all social media platforms. Oops! doing that is going to get you a red card, my friend. 

These networks have different names for a reason because they are different platforms with different formats and different audiences.

Okay, that's a lot of "different"!

Here’s a study from Serpwatch:

• LinkedIn is for work professionals and mostly for B2B related content.

• Instagram hates low-quality images.

• Twitter is a fan of originality and funny content.

• Facebook loves longer blog posts

• Snapchat is a short and sweet content type of platform.

Therefore, taking the same approach to these platforms is really ineffective and will set you up for failure, instead, know the demographics, best type of content, and most effective time to post on these networks and tailor your content to fit them.

Do your research on the type of posts most suitable on each network and know the approach that works best for each platform. 

For example, Snapchat is a platform filled with teens, will your marketing style on Facebook appeal to them? Nah.

That image you posted on Instagram that got high engagement can be an absolute nightmare on LinkedIn. Therefore, stop the one size fits all approach for these networks.

Finally, remember the popular Dolly Parton challenge, where pictures more appropriate for the different social networks were placed in a grid, that is another proof that all networks are different. 

Source: Burger King

5. Buying Followers

Oh my God! This one is a huge No! No! No! It is an absolute recipe for disaster. This is not only against the policies of the platforms but also a very shallow way to get great social media results.

Buying followers will end up preventing you from getting in front of real people, also a large following count doesn't guarantee social media marketing success, because you can have a lot of followers and they couldn't care more or less about your business.

You want to build real relationships that will have a long term impact on your business, your audience might be small but drive business results and growth for your brand.

More followers don't necessarily mean more customers, having a huge following just because it looks good is a distraction from what truly matters: your business growth and revenue.

6. Posting Without Critical Evaluation

People can be very sensitive and critical on social media, they are quick to point out any type of error, in fact, no mistake regardless of how little goes unnoticed.

Even worse, innocent mistakes can easily be misinterpreted and attract backlash. Brands have ended up apologizing for the silliest of mistakes in the past, that could have been prevented if they did a thorough once-over on their posts.

Before anything goes live, make sure it complies with your social media policy, which you should definitely have, by the way, has zero grammatical errors, won't be offensive to a group of people, or sounds unprofessional.

There should be a protocol in place before any content goes live, questions like, is it going to sound offensive? Is this the right wording? Does it sound biased? Is this being indicative of people's choices? should be addressed.

For example, Dove, in an attempt to promote the idea of positive body image and sound inclusive of all body types, made a product launch of body wash bottles that came in the shape of different body types.

@Dove

However, this backfired, Dove found themselves in a hot mess as people felt they didn't need to be reminded or defined by their body shapes while in the shower, they also felt it was an exploitation of insecurities.

This is an example of not weighing the offensive factor behind a message. Always do a quadruple check.

7. Being Rigid And Boring

Source: Giphy

Social Media was initially geared at providing entertainment and worldly connection, people go on social networks to be entertained before it evolved and expanded to a marketing arena.

Therefore, the fastest way to make your brand lose relevance and attention is to be boring and so rigid …. yawn.

With social media, you have to get creative and infuse the business with fun to attract attention, grow your followers base, and drive engagement.

This is not to say you should try to be constantly funny, because people find that annoying too, just adopt a casual approach to deliver your brand's message, that way your followers can relate to your message.

Don't be rigid, be flexible, keep up with relevant trends to your brand, and don't get stuck to your style because you are on a third-party platform that will continue to make all sorts of changes, and if you can't adapt to these changes due to rigidity, your social media campaign becomes a failure.

Do you know why influencer marketing is so successful? Because people relate to humans more than businesses, but here's the good news, some brands have shown that you can be relatable without neglecting the business side of things.

For example, Taco Bell is one brand that really knows how to infuse humor in their messages, here's one of their tweets:

@Tacobell

Another one;

@Tacobell

You don't want your brand to come across as yet another lifeless corporation trying to make it on social media, speak the social media language: be friendly, casual, fun and entertaining with a mix of professionalism.

Having said all that, don't become overly casual else your brand becomes a huge joke, just try bringing personality into your brand so as not to sound dead or plain boring. As with all things, strike a balance.

According to a study by Sprout Social, 72% of those surveyed said that they are more likely to purchase from a brand if their Social Media image is humorous and 86% love it when brands are friendly.

Pro Tip: Get your team or employees to make an appearance on your social media account, they can make fun videos like stories about how they joined your brand, people love people. 

To easily connect with your audience, show that you are way more than just a brand name, you are a bunch of humans serving them.

8. Zero Engagement With Followers

Is this a familiar scenario?  You post content and then you abandon it, end of discussion. 

People make comments but no replies, your caption doesn't attract any form of engagement, you don't start a conversation in the comment section and you don't involve your followers in your campaigns.

Source: Giphy

This is how your followers will perceive your presence; "Okay, silent brand since you don't want to talk to us, we would ignore you too"

Be active in your social media space, if you are passive, your followers won't take you seriously too, the more active and conversational you are your audience will reciprocate.

Put out the energy you want to receive out there too. People appreciate responses from brands, answer questions, handle negative comments with care.

Responding to comments makes your brand likable, and attracts engagement plus it plays in favor of the algorithm.

Here's an example of Redbull replying a comment on their Facebook page:

@Redbull

Another example:

@Tacobell

Another amazing way of engaging with your followers is leveraging the use of UGC content, engagement increases by 28% when consumers can view a mixture of user-generated product videos and official brand-authored content.

10. Not Tracking The Right Metrics

Just like you track your SEO efforts, social media is no different, you need to track your results else you won't know what's working and what's not, but it doesn't end there. 

Yes, you are tracking the impressions on a post to judge its success, the likes, reach and shares on a post might serve as pointers to doing something right but with zero impact on your business itself. 

You are tracking vanity metrics, these metrics sound good on paper but don't really have a valuable impact on your business growth.

When you get carried away with these metrics, it takes you away from the important thing you need to focus on in your campaign that drives real business results.

Be more focused on metrics like:

• Actions people take after viewing your posts e.g Website visits
• Assisted social conversions 
• Audience growth rate
• Average engagement rates
• Target audience growth rate vs followers
• Visitor frequency rates etc

These metrics actually show you the real business results of your social media campaign.

11. Focusing Solely On Your Business

You know those people that simply can't let go of talking about themselves for 15 minutes straight while talking to others, aren't they the worst company? You are like common this isn't a therapy session. 

That's how your followers will feel if you constantly just talk about your product, services, and everything business related to your business, you keep asking, asking, and asking without giving anything.

On social media, the last impression you want to make is the fact that you only care about yourself because your followers and potential customers need to feel cared for. 

When you make your posts promotional all the time, you will come off as desperate, annoying, and salesy, 86% of social media users follow a brand, and nearly 60% of them are annoyed with too many promotions by brands.

So, try incorporating your followers along, and make them feel like they are part of your business goals.

When you show that you care about them they will care about you back, as much as it hurts, your followers only care about the value you are giving them. 

Make your social media content matched to your audience, make it all about your audience, what do they love, how they love it, what do they want to hear, the more you know about your audience the better your social media campaign.

Next time, before you put out content, ask yourself, how is this benefitting my followers, what's in it for them?

Stop always posting with expectations, give, be generous and your followers will in turn be generous with their support. 

Feed them with helpful and practical information they can apply to their lives, like hacks, how to's, blogs, facts, etc

When you make it about your audience you build trust and cultivate a great relationship, SurveyMonkey reported that 68 percent of U.S. adults say trust in a brand has a "great deal" or "a lot" of influence on their decision when making a big purchase.

Conclusion

You can't get everything right when it comes to social media as it's a dynamic world, but you can prevent yourself from indulging in wrongs that put you at a disadvantage.

In the world of social media marketing, know your target audience, then prepare a social media marketing strategy that suits your audience and brand goals.

Furthermore, focus on social media networks that suit your brand and customize your content for each.

Marketing on social media involves a lot of experiments and creativity, therefore patience and consistency must be observed for long term success.

Now that you are aware, go ahead and turn your social media followers into loyal customers by steering clear of these pitfalls.

This article originally appeared on Digital Content Vault