There is no doubt that social media has become a big part of our lives and in turn, an important vehicle for marketing your business online. Using social media correctly for marketing allows you many opportunities to reach your target audience through numerous social channels.
But if you make the unfortunate mistake of using them to market your business incorrectly, you run the risk of tarnishing your brand and your reputation. This can have potentially far-reaching consequences. With that in mind, it’s vital to avoid any blunders as far as possible to preserve your business’ image.
In order to make the most of the opportunities available to you on social media, it’s important that you take an honest look at your current marketing strategy and ask yourself if it includes any of the 5 below common mistakes. If it does, make adjustments. Doing this will increase the odds of your content reaching more of your audience and provide the opportunity to build relationships with your followers.
1. Concentrating on the number of followers you have
Having followers does play a key role in building brand awareness, getting leads and reaching new audiences. But collecting followers is by no means the end game, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. What really matters most is what you do after you gain a follower. If you fail to reach out to them and maintain a connection, your page likely won’t gain rapid popularity or acceptance from your community.
This is because the already small organic reach you have when a follower initially likes your page dwindles if they don’t engage with your content. The eventuality is that your followers won’t see any of your content if you don’t take the time to build relationships.
Having followers who consistently engage with your content is great! So post on a regular basis and post content that your followers want to see and engage with. Also, make an effort to reply to all forms of engagement on your page. These could be questions, comments and customer service issues. Doing this lets your audience know that there is a human connection behind your brand.
2. Posting irrelevant, boring or overly sales-driven content
The type of content that you post on your page will either keep your followers coming back for more or cause your page to disappear into the social media void. If your content is unrelatable, boring or overly promotional then your followers are likely to scroll past it without even so much as a second glance or worse, unfollow your page. If your audience skips over your content too often, it eventually won’t show up in the news feed anymore.
Just because you have 4000 followers doesn’t mean that all 4000 will automatically get to see your content. In order to capture the attention of all of your followers and possibly even their friends, you need to create content that will thoroughly delight and interest them! Focus on creating content that informs, entertains, educates or inspires. A general rule of thumb is to create content that is 80% non-promotional and 20% sales based.
3. Not boosting your content
The sad truth is that social media organic content no longer reaches as many people as it once did and even the best content in the world can’t get nearly as much reach when compared to boosted content. So if you want your content to be seen by a significant number of social media users, you need to pay to play. If you don’t pay and choose to rely on organic content alone, your followers will see your content at first after liking your page and over time your visibility will drop significantly.
If you want maximum visibility, it’s advisable for you to include an ad budget to boost your most important social media content. Doing so ensures that your content will not only make it into the newsfeed but also reach new, untapped audiences. Setting up an ad is easy. All you do is decide on your desired target audience’s age, demographics and location.
4. Coming across as tone-deaf
2021 still presents numerous challenges for South Africans. Some significant ones include ongoing health and economic crises, rife political corruption and a large number of local small businesses having to shut their doors, sadly being forced to close down for good because they aren’t making any money.
In lieu of all this, it’s easy to see why it’s so important for brands to be sensitive to these serious issues and to create content that speaks to them in a respectful yet relatable way. Good marketing messages should align with current events without being offensive or irrelevant. Unfortunately, some brands don’t feel that this is necessary and either demonstrate insensitivity to current events or fail to adjust their marketing strategy to fit with the times. The timing and wording of their messages come across as tone-deaf which illustrates that they are out of touch with what their audience wants to see.
With tensions high and many in a sombre mood, the last thing you want to do is come across as offensive or insensitive to what people are going through. Rather your social media content should be a source of help, inclusion and convey a sense of camaraderie. Another good idea is to let your followers know what you are doing to help your community which can provide a sense of hope.
5. Doing it all yourself
When first starting a business, you might want to handle all the social media yourself. But doing this is ill-advised because it will take too much time and focus away from other important aspects of your business. Social media marketing is a complicated job and requires dedicated resources to handle the many responsibilities that come with the territory.
To give you an idea here is a shortlist of some of the things a social media marketing manager handles:
- Creating and posting content several times a week.
- Boosting and creating separate ad content.
- Engaging with the community by responding to comments and queries and building brand loyalty.
- Dealing with negative reviews or customer complaints.
- Staying up to date of the latest marketing trends and adjusting accordingly.
- Analysing insights and reports and tweaking strategies to meet goals.
It’s advised that once you have the budget, you outsource your social media work to a content marketing agency that specialises in this. Letting go of this responsibility will free you up to focus on the growth of your business. Additionally, you will be able to network, develop a sales pipeline and build a team to help you with other aspects of your business.
Contact us today to see how we can help you with your social media marketing and free up more of your time to focus on growing your business.
