Social media is an integral component of any successful
digital marketing strategy. With 74 percent of adults using social networking
sites, the opportunity to increase your site’s online exposure to new customers
cannot be ignored.
Top social media marketing mistakes to avoid While the ROI
of social media marketing remains hotly debated, there is no doubt that it can
be a great tool for optimizing your web presence—or total nightmare experience
depending on the execution of your strategy. Here is a list of social media
marketing mistakes to avoid, and ways to ensure your campaign’s success.
1. Paying for fans and followers.
Having thousands of fans, followers, and likes leverages the
power of validation and social proof, especially since visitors tend to take
positive action when they see others have already shared the page.
However, social media sites have algorithms that track and
analyze user engagement and interaction, including the number of people
interested in an account’s updates as a percentage of total followers. When
businesses have low engagement rates, platforms limit the reach of certain
accounts because the numbers indicate low relevance and interest among
followers. Therefore, fake followers only serve to hurt brands in the long run.
Instead of wasting money on paid fans, spend more time on
creating your strategy and increasing your fan base organically. Considerations
include:
· Having specific, measurable goals
with timelines.
· Creating a system or set of
policies for updates, such as the types of posts allowed and how employees
should respond to feedback, criticism, or suggestions.
· Identifying the appropriate corporate persona and tone via
social media.
2.
Using too many social networks.
Research
shows that marketers generally focus on three social networks: LinkedIn (91
percent), Twitter (85 percent), and Facebook (81 percent). However, the three
social networks you should focus on depend on your niche or industry.
Recent
research shows that the largest social platforms of 2014 were:
Facebook,
1.28 billion active users
Google Plus,
540 million active users
Twitter, 255
million active users
Instagram,
200 million active users
LinkedIn,
187 million active users
Pinterest,
40 million active users
If your
primary demographic is women and your site relies heavily on images and
graphics, you should allocate resources to Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
If you offer professional advice, services or products, LinkedIn and Twitter
will yield the best results. The networks you dedicate time to should yield the
highest ROI for your niche and target demographic; otherwise, your time, money,
and resources would be better spent elsewhere.
3. Failing to use (or optimize)
hashtags.
Harness the
power of hashtags by creating your own. If your own hashtag gets picked up,
then you’ll have a viral thing going. It is critical that you create a hashtag
that has a specific message, one that’s interesting, engaging, and free of
ambiguity.
Brands
should also be using trending hashtags. This can help spike your reach and
inject your brand into trending conversations. So, how do you find trending
hashtags that you can use effectively?
Use tools
such as Hastagify.me to identify hashtags that are related to your business.
Then use
RiteTag.com to tell you when a hashtag is overused, and that you should choose
another hashtag to piggyback off of. This way, your content won’t get lost in
the sea of tweets and posts.
4. Isolating social media marketing
from other activities.
The focus on
social media marketing is so high that some marketers forget the other assets
of the business. In order for social media marketing to reach its full
potential, it has to be tied in with a business’s website, blog, product pages,
and other digital platforms—the essence of the web presence optimization (WPO)
framework.
Setting up
and growing a business blog is critical to your brand’s long-term success.
After all, followers don’t want to click-through to product pages from Twitter,
but are more than willing to check out interesting news, tips, advice, or
guides.
For
instance, if you manage a skincare product company, linking to a page selling
acne medicine won’t get you many visits. On the other hand, blog posts titled
“Top Skin Care Experts Reveal Secrets” or “How to Feel Confident in Your Own
Skin” will get tons of engagement. The added benefit is that consumers will
also develop positive associations with your brand.
5. Overselling.
One of the
biggest mistakes marketers often make is pushing their brand too hard. Don’t be
overly promotional and forget to share some value-added content. This means
brands shouldn’t only broadcast their own posts, products, and company-specific
information. Showing the consumer you care about their well-being, regardless
of whether they buy your product, is critical to developing a loyal fan base.
6. Not using visuals to drive
engagement.
The power of
visual content cannot be overstated. For example, on Twitter:
Photos
average 35 percent more Retweets
Videos earn
28 percent more
Famous
quotes get 19 percent more
Tweets with
numbers achieve 17 percent more
Hashtags
receive 16 percent more
With a high
volume strategy, the boost you can achieve with a visual aid is too good to
past up.
7. Including the full URL in the
description.
When you
paste a link in the status field, Facebook generates a clickable image/excerpt.
The link you’ve pasted is thus redundant, should be removed and a catchy
description should be incorporated. The bare link should never take the place
of your description.
An expansion
of this concept can be applied to Twitter—don’t use long, full URLs in your
Tweets. Marketers should leverage URL shorteners (including Twitter’s own) to
leave space for other users to respond or share. Also, URL shorteners such as
Bit.ly or Google can help you track the number of click-backs.
8. Sharing too much at once and
overwhelming your followers’ feeds/streams.
Sharing
posts one after another within a few minutes time is a good way to get people
to unfollow you or overlook all your posts. Businesses should use scheduling
tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite to space out tweets and posts for optimal
sharing times. For Facebook, marketers can visit “Insights” then “Posts” to see
what times most fans are online.
On the other
end of the spectrum, sharing infrequently or irregularly will make your
followers forget you. Create a regular posting schedule so your readers know
when to expect new content from you.
9. Ignoring comments/tweets.
Whoever is
responsible for your social media marketing strategy and message should be
responsive to customers by replying to comments on Facebook, tweeting to
customers on Twitter, thanking followers for Retweets, and proactively engaging
with others, including influencers.
Similarly,
brands must deal with negative messages as quickly as possible. If you ignore
this aspect of your marketing efforts, you’re bound to lose credibility and followers.
Sometimes turning a negative experience into a positive one by rectifying
issues can earn a company life-long customers.
10. Not measuring results.
To optimize
results, businesses need to analyze their social media marketing efforts. Is
your reach growing? Are you engaging more followers month after month, or are
your engagement stats decreasing? Is your social message consistent with your
mission statement and branding? If possible, can you calculate an ROI? What
metrics are important to you?
Whether
you’re getting positive or negative results, analyzing and understanding your
performance is crucial to a successful marketing campaign. But remember, it’s
not just about getting more followers, comments, likes, etc. You can be growing
your account every month, but if your effort isn’t translating into sales
revenue, lead generation, growing your email subscriber list or whatever your
goal is, you are wasting your time.
Final Word
While the
idea of going viral and earning thousands of shares and likes is exciting,
businesses should always keep in mind that social media is a tool within a
broad, overall marketing strategy—every aspect of which must be laser focused
and executed. By avoiding these social media marketing mistakes, marketers can
prevent setbacks and further grow their online presence.
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