Social media has great potential for businesses that want to boost their reach, leads, and traffic. But when it is not being used properly, social media could actually damage the reputation of your brand.
When social media has so much to offer, it is crucial that you are proficient enough to know how to get the most out of it.
Social media mistakes that you must avoid at all costs when it comes to branding
1) Having too many social networks at once
According to recent research, most companies tend to rely on three social networks for branding:
If we look for more social media channels, we see over 500 million users on Instagram and over 100 million active users on Pinterest.
For sites that rely heavily on graphics and images, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest are ideal.
But if your site is about giving professional advice, then Twitter and LinkedIn are your best bets.
The networks that you spend the most time on should be able to yield the highest ROIs for the target.
Solution: Use one or two social networks at a time. Instead of using all social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter at the same time, try to focus on one or two networks.
Simply analyze where your audience spends most of their time and build your social profile there.
Once you are able to build your first social media profile’s authority and generate a sizable audience, only then you should try other social networks.
2) Not taking negative feedback seriously
Negative feedback is common. You should never ignore it.
It’s an opportunity to know where your customers want you to get better. How you respond about your brand says a lot!
A few brands operate under the idea that they can easily remove negative comments. Others think that ignoring them is the right way to go. Instead of avoiding them, you should use these situations as opportunities.
Learn from them and respond to all negative comments. Use them to showcase your commitment towards customer service.
If not dealt with properly, this may be one of the biggest social media mistakes that can cost your brand in a big way.
Solution: Make sure to pay attention to all negative feedback. Even though positive comments make you feel good, you must also take note of these negative comments.
Now, I don’t mean you should give into nonsensical ideas, but pay attention to what people want you to change and whether that change can help the brand improve.
3) Posting similar content
Posting similar content all the time could give people the impression that you are boring and that the brand doesn’t have much creativity to offer.
Instead of just posting one link after the other and some random quotes, you should try to stay in tune with the audience.
When you are hung up on posting similar content, followers will lose interest.
Solution: Post content that is creative and exciting. If you want, you can hire a creative team so that unique content is posted on a regular basis. This will keep your followers engaged and interested in reading your posts.
If you are running out of ideas, spend a few hours analyzing 5 competitors of yours and understand their SMM strategy. Simply pick out some tricks from them and re-define your social strategy.
But make sure to keep your content creative and engaging.
4) Posting too much in one go
Are you one of those irritating and immature brands who keeps blasting content on their social media channels one after another?
Posting too much at one time is a horrible idea. People are more likely to unfollow you or simply overlook all of the posts you share.
Businesses need to use scheduling tools like Hootsuite, SocialPilot and Buffer to make sure there is a proper time frame between tweets and posts. When it comes to Facebook, marketers may visit their “insights” to see what time most of their fans are online.
Solution: Maintain a content calendar, and post a maximum of 4-5 tweets a day and 2-3 Facebook posts a day. Also, make sure to keep testing the post timings, number of updates posted, and be sure to have some content variety (text post, image post, video post, etc.).
5) Not measuring results
In order to optimize the results, businesses should always analyze their social media marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter if the results are positive or negative.
What matters more is that you check, analyze, and understand the performance. This is crucial for a proper marketing campaign.
But always remember that it is not about getting more followers, likes, and comments.
You can be growing the account every month, but if the effort doesn’t translate into lead generation and revenue, then you probably need to alter your social media marketing strategy.
Solution: Once a week, sit down with your team and assess your plan thoroughly. Speak to those who can analyze business and marketing properly and can help your brand get even better with time.
Analyzing will help you optimize and improve your existing campaigns and you’ll get useful creative ideas to further your social media marketing strategy.
6) Adding the URL inside the description box
Who does that?
Never add the URL inside the description box.
I notice many brands across the web doing such silly mistakes. I don’t know who’s managing their social media strategy…
The link that you have posted in the description box is redundant and should be removed immediately. Instead, just keep a simple and catchy description. The bare link should never take up the place of a proper description.
Solution: You need to add something catchy so that more people show interest in your site. In addition, URL shorteners like Bit.ly or Goo.gl can help you track all the click-backs.
7) Using irrelevant hashtags
A common social media mistake is using too many irrelevant hashtags. If the content has no relation to the hashtag, then simply don’t add the hashtag.
You must always remember that adding hashtags can help more people view your content, so if you don’t use the right ones, you might not get the desired results.
Solution: Look up other sites that post similar content and try to use those hashtags in your posts (only if they make sense). Only then you will be able to engage more people with your brand.
8) Not using images for your social media updates
Studies have shown that posts with images perform better.
People who read articles always want to see interesting and related images.
Therefore, when you post some content on social media, don’t forget to add a few images along with it. This will help people stay engaged throughout your content.
Solution: Include images while making social media updates. Also, try creating albums on Facebook while sharing images as it helps in getting a better reach.
Make sure the pictures are of good quality and are related to the topic. Also give image credits wherever it’s required.
9) Not updating regularly
We often make the mistake of thinking that a proper cover photo, killer image, and good details in the About Me section is all we need to keep things going.
If you have been doing this, then you should change this habit immediately. Not updating regularly is a missed opportunity to scale up the results.
The idea here is to tweak a few things in your profile and always keep an eagle’s eye with the thinking and analyzing caps on.
This will help you understand your audience better and you will come to know what your followers like and don’t like.
Solution: You must always update the page, get a proper cover photo, use good images, and share them online. This way, people will know your brand is constantly evolving.
Bottom Line: Avoid the above mentioned social media mistakes and keep things interesting.
By avoiding such common social media mistakes, one can definitely expect improvement for their brand on social media. For this, you have to use all of your resources in a wise manner and respond to all fans and followers regularly.
Try treating your social media followers the same way you would treat other clients in a physical store. This will help you avoid making any drastic mistakes.
On that note, good luck and do let me know in the comments below 1 social media mistake that you now realize you have been doing and will not be repeating anymore… 🙂
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9 Social Media Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Brand And Business is a post from ShoutMeLoud - Shouters Who Inspires
