Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Absolutely Need To Avoid
For most businesses out there social media is very complicated. That is mainly because of the fact that a good strategy needs to be developed, content has to be constantly sourced, audience engagement is necessary, comment responses are needed and some selling needs to be done at the same time. All this is hard to do without experience and a proper understanding of what you have to do in social media marketing.
The good news is you do not need to have a specific department inside a small company that would only do social media marketing work. All the information that is needed is available on the internet. You just need to be dedicated towards learning as much as possible about this subject. All starts with first identifying the really common mistakes people make with social media marketing. That is precisely what we will focus on. Below you can find some of the most common of all the mistakes made especially by the smaller companies, based on work by Third Angle.
Overdoing The Social Aspect
There are literally thousands of social media pages and accounts that are no longer updated because of a lack of time. This normally happens because of the fact that the company tries to be way too social and have a presence on as many networks as possible. Inevitably, this leads towards having some accounts that are no longer managed due to a lack of time. If a customer reaches your Twitter profile and sees that no tweets were published in the past few months you can be sure that company image will be lower in the eyes of the viewer.
Small businesses do not need many social media profiles. It is so much better to just focus on platforms that are highly relevant to the target audience. The main social networks to consider are definitely Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. However, you do not need accounts on all of them.
Think about where the customers you look for spend most of their time. That is where your presence should be as high as possible. Do not start working on social media accounts if you do not have the needed time to properly take care of them.
Lack Of Engagement
This is most likely the most damaging mistake that social media marketers make. It is particularly damaging when referring to products that people do not know much about since they will have questions that should be answered. As an example, let us say that you promote a high quality organic coffee enema solution. Someone may not know much about it and can ask questions about really tough question. If you do not respond you can be sure that the person will not buy anything. At the same time, those that see you do not answer will not even look at other posts or pages on your site.
Remember that social media communication is not one-way. You do not just hand out information to an audience that is silent. Think about it as friends hanging out at a coffee shop. You want to exchange ideas, learn more, share and ask questions. When you do not make the extra effort of being genuinely interested in what current or potential customers want, a successful online relationship will never be established. Over 60% of people visit social media in order to get customer service help. If you are not there offering it, problems appear.
Not Taking Reviews Into Account
It is completely true that you will always have some negative reviews, no matter how great your business is. However, ignoring them is going to be a sure recipe for disaster on the long run. Online reviews are the consumer’s way to share the negative experiences they have. The smart business managers always respond to the negative reviews and thank people that offer positive reviews.
Most businesses have the reputation of being self-serving and cold. Through social media this can be changed. Interactions can actually rectify different issues that appeared and responses from company representatives will always be highly appreciated. The way in which you handle the negative reviews will reflect on your entire business as one that does care about customers or one that is not interested in solving problems as they appear.
Overselling
This is another really common social media marketing mistake that should not appear as often as they do right now. Social media has an end goal of converting the audience but when this is blatantly obvious, problems appear. Users are going to escape with the use of social media. They are trying to distance themselves from the advertising streams they are surrounded by wherever they go. In social media we have interactions that stand out as the most important things to consider.
Small businesses that will forget about the interaction part of social media are going to simply sell way too hard. You want to make sales through content. For instance, you can do this through a blog post that will direct web traffic to the site or some videos that are going to offer valuable tutorials or lessons for the viewers.
Thinking There Is Not Much Work Needed
Managing social media pages and running the business at the same time is usually much more than one person can handle. It is hard to allocate all the time that is needed to actually succeed. Business growth is going to be halted because of that and you should know it happens so much more often than what most people think.
Remember that as social media profiles grow there is a pretty good possibility that you are going to have to hire someone to take care of everything. Specialists are going to know more. It is as simple as that. There is so much work that is needed to manage a very good social media profile. It involves research and engagement. Just answering comments and planning content can end up lasting hours when most people think that it can be done in just minutes.
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