I often hear from clients that social media marketing is “easy” and that “anyone can do it” or that they’d rather pay their best friend’s 17 year-old niece to do it because she’s “really into Facebook and stuff.” Yes, these are real things I’ve heard before. Many times I witness the business sign up for every single social media platform under the sun (cuz heck, why not? It’s free right?) then incessantly bombard the platforms with an overload of information or worse, abandon the social platforms altogether when they’ve realized they’re too busy to keep up with the never ending marketing it requires. Just get on and brag about your company, shamelessly touting all you can do for the world, right? WRONG.
Social media marketing is so much more than being “really into Facebook” and thinking that you can just get on and self-promote till your followers (if you managed to snag any) RUN away. It requires brainstorming, strategy, patience, and some blood, sweat, and tears sometimes! If you’re not managing your social presence correctly, it could end up doing a lot of damage to your brand overall. With all of that being said, there are some mistakes you really must avoid if you want to stay successful socially.
- No Strategy In Place
- When I plan social media campaigns, I start by developing a strategy. This usually will help determine what platforms a client should be on and why, what message they want to convey as a business, and how I’m going to help them achieve that. It is an essential component to a successful campaign.
- A lot of clients think and/or want to be on every single platform. The more the merrier right? They think that being on every platform will allow them more exposure when in reality being on the wrong platforms can only cause problems if they’re utilized the wrong ways. Don’t waste your time with things that won’t benefit you as a business. Establish who you’re trying to reach, and where your defined audience spends their time, as well as how you want to convey your messages. This will identify the platforms best suited for your business.
- I make sure to carefully review the client needs before recommending a strategy tailored to making their campaign work for their business model. Then I use that research to show you why it will work before executing the careful tactics.
- Bombarding Users With Posts (Or Creating a Social Media Ghost Town)
- Once we’ve developed the strategy best suited for your business, we can begin implementing it. With the many different platforms available to you, the question often becomes – when should I be posting, how often, and what should you post? You should make sure you’re always providing value with quality content to your customers. Posting for the sake of having content up is bad practice and annoys your users. You want to make sure you’re catching the attention of your potential customers, while also encouraging engagement and interaction. Recommendations, depending on platform and what content you have to share at the time, look something like this:
- Try and post to Facebook around two times a day. With changes to the algorithm all the time, making sure you’re generating high-quality content is important, however keeping it limited to around two times max ensures you’re not overwhelming users’ newsfeeds. Using Facebook’s insights we are able to determine the best times to post based on when your actual fans are online.
- To keep up with Twitter’s fast-paced newsfeed, we recommend posting around 6-15 times a day. Three or more a day shows brands starting to get better engagement and it’s constantly moving so in this case, the more – the better. It’s not usually going to hurt you to tweet more here. Leverage retweeting other brands and mentioning your fans to get recognized in the busy Twitter world as well.
- LinkedIn has stated itself that posting around 20 times a month allows you to reach up to 60% of your audience. With figures like that, we think posting around once a day will get the job done. Aim to push content out earlier in the morning before users head to work.
- While Google+ is a bit more vague in what metrics are working for it, it resembles Facebook in terms of layout and functionality, so we recommend the twice a day rule here as well. It depends on the content that is needed to share at the time. To be frank though, there’s not as many users on Google+ so there’s not as much risk associated with annoying your users.
- The key with Instagram is consistency. If you want to post twice a day, stick to around twice a day. If you want to post up to six times a day, go for it! But your users get accustomed to your posting amounts so pick an amount and try to stay around it.
- Trying to Sell ALL THE TIME
- Don’t become a social media braggart. Your company may have the best product in the world and you just want to tell everyone to buy it every single day, but you’re going to quickly annoy and push away your following. If they’re already following you, they probably already know you’re pretty awesome.
- I’ll let you in on a little secret, no one actually likes to be sold to. Sure, at times you just want to let your followers in on the latest sales and best deals coming up for your brand, but you have to keep a balance or you’re going to drive away fans. Try sticking to the 80/20 rule. About 80% of your content should be relevant, helpful information and 20% is allowed to be brand promotion and “salesy.”
- The ultimate goal is to keep users engaged and interested but also informed on how wonderful your business is, and the key is balance. Constant promotion is going to lead to swift unfollows.
These are the big mistakes to try and avoid when getting started with a social media campaign. It’s not just a walk in the park, it takes careful planning and execution every time.