The potential of social media in making a business grow is not in doubt, and many businesses and entrepreneurs are realizing the positive effects it has on their brand growth. The most popular sites such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, as well as Pinterest, end up drawing in millions every day. The bad news is that numerous organizations do not know how to handle these sites effectively, and end up failing to make an impact.
The thing with social media networking is that it takes a significant amount of time and effort to make it work for you. If you are not careful, it can easily lead to the downfall of your brand, and waste all the effort you made in building your reputation. For you to avoid making major mistakes, you need to know what they are. Here are some common mistakes many businesses make in an attempt to use social media.
You do not have a likeable social personality
Make no mistake – you do not need to have clever or funny to be likeable on social media. The priority here is to be as welcoming as possible, show people that you are not just business 24/7, and entertain them in your own unique ways.
You do need to keep something in mind though – always maintain your audience and their needs in mind when making your posts. For instance, you cannot decide to share cat or dog videos when they are expecting you to give them serious content.
You must also be careful about religious beliefs and sharing them on social media. The business is not supposed to alienate potential and current customers because of differences in religion, politics, or any other controversial issue. That will only succeed in driving people away and landing you in a major PR crisis.
Failing to follow the law of ‘karma’
Getting into social media is like getting into a relationship with someone – you need to put in a lot of work to maintain it. many of the users who follow you are only looking for good content, so make sure your posts are entertaining, share-worthy or information oriented that makes it look interesting to them.
If you can give this kind of content, then social karma builds up and leads to an increase in the shares, likes and comments it generates. This later leads to conversions, and ultimate growth for your brand. If you fail to do this, you are only shouting yourself hoarse because no one will hear you above the noise – and you might damage your brand in the process.
You fail to tie sales and social media together
There are many businesses that eventually learn the hard way that they need to integrate social media if they want their marketing to be successful.Instead of having a concrete plan to grow their content and engagements, they just invest tons of money into social media without an end goal or a plan to create returns on the investment.
The main issue here is expecting your social media users to switch from being Twitter or Instagram followers or Facebook fans to becoming your customer. You can reduce the problem from occurring through the use of analytical programs like Google Analytics, and this will help you know the extent your social media plays into your sales.
You fail to measure the things that matter
Social media has plenty of metrics you can study and use to find information that will help in sales and marketing projections. However, even though the numbers from this data will be very helpful in your marketing team, they might not always translate directly to your end results – especially in conversions.
Always keep in mind that end results for your business are not always accurately seen in social analytics. Instead, these analytics will keep track of the social media efforts your brand is making. In order to measure your end goal success, you need to examine other indicators that are specific for your business, and do this on a regular basis to know what to adjust along the way.
One instance is the number of likes on Instagram that you get – this does not indicate the performance of your business. You can even increase it if you decide to use services and bots that help you get free Instagram auto likes, although it does not show your growth rates as organic.
In addition, you have a million likes, but no comments or very few ones. A better measurement would be ‘engagement rates’, which means the number of comments you get or the number of people talking about you. This will tell you more about the people you can possibly convert into customers.
You leave social media management to interns
One of the worst mistakes you can commit is leaving your social media management to a completely unqualified person, and not has someone else who is more experienced in the industry, to supervise them. while an intern might have experience in using social media for their own personal accounts, the case is different when managing an account for a business or brand – any shred of inexperience is likely to lead to disastrous results.
You cannot also think that only one person can handle everything, especially if your company is seeking to grow in the online space. You need someone to track any data from your posts and refine the post delivery, someone else to handle the audience engagement, and someone else to tie everything together. You will also need a manager for your social media accounts, and they must produce the best results after seeing the bigger picture while advising you accordingly.
Conclusion
From this post alone, getting success on social media marketing is not an easy task – it requires plenty of resources, dedication and commitment. It is also easy to make these mistakes if you are not careful, but you can also avoid committing them if you take your time to set up the correct conditions for success.
