We all see a lot of tips on how to leverage social media for your digital marketing strategy. However, it is equally, if not more, important to know what social media mistakes to avoid. Here are some tips to help you navigate the no-no’s for social media marketing.
1. Don’t Skip the Research
Don’t just embark on a haphazard social media campaign. First, you really need to do a significant amount of research. You have to have a coherent plan if you want your campaigns to succeed. You need to start with intelligent and reasonable goals to help avoid social media mistakes.
Research Current Trends
The world of digital marketing is constantly changing. To keep up you need to stay knowledgeable of current trends in social media marketing. While this is research you should definitely do before embarking on a social media strategy, you should also continue to research trends regularly in order to keep your strategy relevant.
Research Current Best SEO Practices
Just like current social media marketing trends are quickly changing, search engine optimization (SEO) is always evolving. Search engines such as Google regularly modify their algorithms, which means you need to be aware of those alterations and modify your own SEO strategy as needed to keep your business at the top of search engine rankings.
Research Your Competitors’ Campaigns
This may seem counter-intuitive; however, it’s actually a really important part of your research. By combing through your competitor’s campaigns, you can figure out what campaigns have been most successful and getting the most engagement. You can also determine what types of campaigns failed to really engage your target audience.
Furthermore, you can check out who your competitors are following, who is following them, and with whom they’re consistently interacting with.
2. Don’t Over Share
We all have friends who constantly give too much information and who share everything way too often. It’s like listening to a toddler’s stream of consciousness; everything they think comes straight out of their mouths the second that they think it. Don’t be like those friends.
Yes, you want to share your personality, your company culture, but you want to keep it professional. If your content isn’t something that you would want your mother to read, don’t post it.
Pretend that you’re addressing your biggest, most important client. What do you want that client to know about you and your business? Post that type of content.
As another note on what not to post, make sure to keep it clean. Confrontational attitudes and obnoxious or potentially offensive language has no place in your social media marketing strategy. It makes you look sophomoric and unprofessional.
3. Don’t Create Spammy Content
No one wants spam. Think about it for a second. How many emails a day do you automatically delete without even opening them? I know I delete a bunch. From random offers that don’t interest you to newsletters that you’re pretty sure you never signed up for, no one wants to read irrelevant content.
You need to provide legitimately interesting content and blog posts that people like, comment on, and share. Tweets should also be liked and re tweeted.
Furthermore, you want people to actually enjoy reading your email offers because they know they’ll be getting something useful. You want people to subscribe to your online newsletter because the ideas and advice is good and the stories you tell are interesting.
4. Don’t Just Promote Your Business
This is nearly equivalent to spamming your audience. Yes, you’re likely using social media marketing to essentially promote your business, but no one except you enjoys your self-aggrandizement. It makes people feel like you’re just another slimy salesman. People prefer to feel like they can build a genuine relationship with you. They need to trust you. They need to find value in what they see from you.
Social media marketing is incredibly different than other marketing endeavors. While you should definitely promote your brand, your content should also focus on providing a resource as an industry authority. Your social media strategy should have a primary goal of producing high quality information, which establishes you as a credible authority in your industry.
Furthermore, use your own social media to promote others in industries that compliment your industry. Form strong relationships and partnerships with people who can, in turn, promote you on their social media.
5. Don’t Intentionally Lie or Mislead Your Audience
Don’t pretend to be what you are not. Sometimes social media marketing feels much like a high school popularity contest, but don’t let that impression affect your social media strategy. Keep your strategy and your content consistent with your brand identity.
While the process of building a following, increasing your interactions with your audience, and ultimately generating leads may initially seem quite slow, if you maintain consistency, you will eventually reap the benefits of your solid social media marketing.
It’s tempting to present the ideal image of your business instead of the reality of your business, but no business is perfect because people aren’t perfect. For example, consider your personal social media accounts.
Most of your friends and followers are only posting the happy aspects of their lives, leaving out all of the difficulties, which makes their lives appear picture-perfect. This isn’t quite a lie, but it is an intentional omission of information, which is misleading.
Why Honesty is truly the best policy in Social Media
Companies who intentionally try to mislead, or flat out lie, to their audiences will find that they fail to maintain a following because people feel that they can’t be trusted.
If a company can’t be trusted, then it doesn’t stand a chance of building brand loyalty or any kind of industry authority. Those brands quickly decline and may even disappear altogether. Otherwise, they find themselves in a situation that requires a complete re branding, essentially forcing to start from the beginning, which costs both a lot of time, effort, and money.
How will you benefit by avoiding theses social media mistakes
The benefits of social media marketing is unparalleled, so you definitely need to develop a strategy for your social media plan. Knowing social media best practices is a key element of a good marketing strategy, but understanding the negative practices that plenty of companies run into is also invaluable. So, do your research, create consistently good, informative content that will appeal to your target audience. Paint a clear and realistic picture of your brand identity. Also, don’t forget to have fun with it. However if you’ve discovered your time is limited and you need a strategic partner, our social media marketing company in Charlotte can help! Contact us at 980-222-3427 for all your social needs.