It’s 2017…If your business doesn’t have a social media presence; you are not only missing out on building an active engaged audience but also missing out on a lot of potential customers. Of course, whilst it’s brilliant for brands to utilise social media for their marketing, you need to be aware of the potential mistakes that can happen.
In this article, I will be covering 3 mistakes that businesses tend to make, and how to overcome them.
Being On Too Many Social Media Platforms
Majority of smaller businesses tend to create an account on most social media platforms, the reason being “Because I was told it’s good for my business, I need to be on everything”. That’s not always true.
Sometimes your ideal audience may not even utilise that platform. Being on too many social media platforms can be a tough task because there’s nothing worse than leaving your social media accounts inactive on a social media platform. Trust me, it’s not good.
You need to be active on the platforms. I’ve seen it happen a few times where someone has tried contacting an inactive company social media account and they’ve not got anywhere, the issue then escalated even more. I’ve been in the same situation where I’ve tried to contact a company yet they’re inactive.
If you haven’t already guessed the key takeaway from this mistake, is that you shouldn’t be on too many platforms if you don’t have the time to manage and update them. It could really damage your brand reputation. You should identify if your audience is on the platform and how you could interact with them, mapping out a realistic marketing plan before you jump on the bandwagon and end up leaving it to go inactive.
Sharing Non-Interest Content
It’s all well and good sharing content on your social media profiles but if you aren’t actively sharing nor are they interesting to your audience, you aren’t going to receive much engagement nor increase your follower growth quickly.
Content is key. You need to ensure you have interesting engaging content that your audience will find helpful and worth sharing. Whether that’s the latest news in a specific industry, top tips, interviews with well-known influencers, or even eye-catching media like images with interesting quotes etc. You can find content that’s share-worthy via the use of many tools such as Feedly, Buzzsumo and Anders Pink.
Don’t just share random articles that you come across on the web and think are interesting. You need to think about your audience, would they find it interesting? Would they share it? What will they get out of reading it? – staying up-to-date with industry trends, gain knowledge etc?
Once you start to think about the content you are sharing and have a content marketing plan you will start to notice your engagement will increase and you should see your follower growth start to pick up, providing you apply these top tips too.
The main takeaway from this mistake is that you should focus on sharing useful information with your audience at least 4+ times a day depending on the platform. Think about sharing industry trends, news, interviews with the established industry influencers etc.
Focussing On Just Sales
Throughout my time working in marketing, I’ve seen a numerous amount of business social media profiles sharing sales posts one after the other. The engagement they received? It was amazing! No, far from it. They had little to no engagement on their sales posts.
For starters, their timeline was just full of posts sharing their latest products or telling people to buy their products. The posts had no creativity and were very basic. Those accounts had a very little following. Like seriously, who wants to be faced with constant self-advertisement all the time? Definitely not me!
You need to focus on more than just your sales. Whilst it’s recommended to post sales posts every now and then, you should follow the 80/20 rule.
Most of the updates on your social accounts should be useful engaging content that your audience will find interesting. Like mentioned in the above point, you should think about sharing content such as industry news, interviews and tips.
The best type of content you should be sharing on your social media platforms should be useful content from your company blog, for example like Creation Agency does. If you don’t already have one, you should be writing insightful content that provides your audience lots of knowledge and makes them want to come back for more so you can slowly but surely start building relationships.
Also Read: The Rules That Will Help You Master Influencer Marketing
With the help of an agency like Proven SEO, delivery of sponsored blog posts, branded content and social influencer services can help your company stand out from the crowd and show you don’t just care about your sales, but care and engage with your audience, developing that human relationship even more.