Avoid these 4 social media mistakes
Yes social media is easy and yes again to social media is also not that easy. Social media has many benefits for business, however we have found that many social media marketers are making what we term as “social media mistakes”. This posts addresses the 4 common social media mistakes that should be avoided. If you have made these mistakes, its never too late to rectify them.
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It’s all about the numbers
It feels and looks good if your Facebook or Twitter page has thousands of fans and followers, however this is not necessarily a good indication of a successful social media account. We not saying that its wrong to focus on building your fans and followers, but rather spend time understanding who your target audience is and developing content that engages them. Engagement can be measured by how many people saw your post, reacted to it, shared it, liked it or commented on it. When your have a responsive and engaged audience, this increases your social media reach, building trust and credibility for your business and brand and increasing your chances of conversion.
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Spreading yourself too thin
There are advantages to being on every social media network as it helps with search engine optimization (SEO), however this does mean that you are thinly spread especially if you do not have the resources to manage all the social media platforms. This often leads to social media platforms that have irregular posts or appear to be abandoned. This does have a negative impact on your brand for any outsider looking in.
Our suggestion is to research your target audience to understand their demographics and interests along with which social media platform they spend their time on. For example, if you have a business in the tourism industry, your target audience may be more visually inclined, meaning that they spend more time on Facebook and Instagram. Invest your time to build trust and credibility for your brand by focusing on specific platforms which would maximize your impact and be worth your precious time.
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Posting too often
It is important to update your social media platforms on a consistent basis. With Facebook statistics showing that people only read the top 57% of stories that appear in their newsfeed, and don’t scroll far enough to see the other 43% of posts in their newsfeed; one may believe that by posting more frequently your chances of appearing within the top 57%, increases. Yes it does and nope it doesn’t. We’ll explain more below.
Posting content too often could make your audience feel bombarded with information that may not be relevant and useful to them. This increases your chances of losing fans and followers. Follow the guidelines around how often you should be posting on each network and post content that your audience would be interested in. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm measures the quality of your posts, not the quantity of your posts and your posts will naturally increase its chances of appearing in the top 57% when your audience is responsive to it. The more your audience responds to your posts, the more visible it is to their friends and followers and it will appear higher up in the newsfeed.
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If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
Setting social media goals and having a strategy to achieve those goals are essential. However if you are a small business owner managing your own social media pages, or a busy marketer in a large corporation you may feel that you do not have the time to plan or analyse your social media results. However by not analysing your results this could mean that you wasting your precious time and resources.
Use your social media analytics to gauge how effective your social media posts are. For example look at whether your audience is responsive to your posts? Which posts? Which posts have received dislikes? When is your audience online? Use these insights to influence your ongoing strategy, which helps you develop and create more posts that you know your audience will be responsive too and will help you directly or indirectly work towards achieving your social media goals.
Have your say?
Have you made any mistakes that we haven’t addressed? Share what you’ve learnt with us.
It is never to late to learn. Contact us to help you take the steps that you need to achieve success with social media.
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