As soon as social media marketing became a thing, anyone with any sort of business was opening an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or one of the many social media platforms out there. However, many people have had to learn one or two painful lessons about marketing on social media.
Social media marketing doesn’t obey the same rules as traditional marketing. The approach is different and so are the goals. Many companies have resorted to just hiring companies, such as infintech Designs, to help them navigate the treacherous waters that can be social media. Meanwhile, you too can avoid making the following mistakes:
- Using Social Media Marketing as a Sales Tool
This is a classic rookie mistake and many small business are well known for doing this. Most people are on social media, to see something interesting or to interact with friends or contribute their thoughts on something interesting. Having to constantly read through a sales copy is the online equivalent of having to deal with a hawker when you go to relax on the beach.
While on the beach there may be little you can do, all a person has to do on social media is ‘unfollow’ you and if enough people stop following you, it could cost you your whole social media marketing plan. Use social media to make your brand more visible. Start a discussion related to trends or products and services that your business handles etc. And maybe somewhere in there you can cleverly put a link to your website where the real business is.
- Having no Strategy
On your personal social media page, you can put up whatever post tickles your fancy at a given moment. However, for your business, you will need a much more calculated approach. Simply putting up random posts on social media may not cost you followers but it makes it difficult to quantify your efforts in social media marketing and it also makes it hard to see if there are any results.
Social media marketing is still marketing. At the very least it will cost you time. If you’re serious about marketing on social media, have a plan of attack. You need to first pick a suitable social media platform. Don’t try to be on everything right from the start. Once you’ve picked a platform, know what sort of content you’ll be putting up for your followers i.e. what value will you be adding or what sort of discussion will you be starting? Lastly, have a means of measuring whether your efforts are bearing fruits. Depending on whether your target is improved visibility, conversions etc. have a way of measuring these results.
- Being irregular or being too regular
Even the funniest show on earth can become boring at some point. If you become too familiar to your followers, you become less special and your content also becomes ordinary. Furthermore, it’s not possible to have a high quality post three times a day every day. Give people enough time to digest your previous post before you put up the next.
Being too irregular is also a bad idea. If you go for weeks before posting anything, your followers will never be expectant. If you’re on a site such as Facebook and a follower fails to see your post, the may not even realize that they missed your post because they didn’t expect you to post anything in the first place.
- Poor Interaction
The upside and downside of social media marketing is that people may actually respond to your posts. The upside of this is that you’ll get to hear about the thoughts of your customers or subscribers and these thoughts can actually help to shape the decisions you make in the future. The downside is that sometimes the number of responses can overwhelm you and sometimes, you may make a huge mistake while responding under a great deal of pressure.
Once you’ve made the decision to use social media marketing, be ready to interact with your followers. It won’t always be fun but it’s important for customers to know that you care about what they think. Furthermore, ten people could ask about the price of your product but only one may intend to buy. You may not be able to respond to everyone but make an effort to respond to as many people as you can.
An alternative method is to respond to similar questions on a whole new post. This will ensure you don’t have to reply individually to everyone.