Avoid these common pifalls to make sure you are not wasting time (and money) on your social media strategy
You may already have clear objectives in mind and know exactly who your audience is, but do you know the things that you need to avoid? Carry on reading to find out which things you should leave out of your social media strategy.
1. Don’t ignore social media
It wasn’t too long ago when you weren’t really in business if you didn’t have a website. In this day and age, to be competitive you need to not only have a website but you need to be active on social media too. Consumers want to know the company they are considering spending money with and a social media presence is needed to be successful.
2. Don’t break the golden rule
Social media, believe it or not is a social type of tool! This means you should always be nice. Remember, your impression on social media reflects you as a company. Thank people and offer a helping hand.
3. Don’t neglect your social accounts
If you are just starting to incorporate social media into your business, the last thing you want to do is create multiple social accounts and as a result, feel overwhelmed or bored and then forget them. The worst thing you could do is create one that you never interact with. Again, you need to be social and stay active to engage and interact with customers. You don’t wait to create a bad impression as it takes too long to undo those!
4. Don’t lie
Integrity is a very important part in long-term success and this should be incorporated into your social media strategy. What you post on social media is a direct reflection on you as a business so you don’t want to harm your reputation and ruin your integrity by lying. Lying destroys trust and customers need to trust your brand in order to invest in your product or service.
5. No self-promoting and aggressive behaviour
Social media marketing is all about the soft sell. If you want a social media strategy that works, then you should try to limit the amount of posts where you sell a product or talk about how amazing your company is.
Stick to the 80/20 rule. 80% of your posts should focus on being useful to your audience by educating, entertaining or offering a solution to a problem of theirs. Only 20% of what you post should explicitly promote your business. You can talk about a product or service but make sure that you make it about how that product or service can help your consumer. Social media is about building relationships and nobody likes a hard sell.
6. Avoid creating social media accounts until you have the essentials in place
You need to know who is in charge of maintaining and updating accounts as well as establishing guidelines and a policy for your social media marketing. Most importantly you need to have a strategy in place before you start so you know the objectives, goals and metrics you need to measure in order to make your social media strategy successful.
7. Don’t apply a catch-all approach
Naturally you would sell your product or service to anyone that came up and wanted it, but you can’t market to everyone. Make sure you define your audience and go after those who are most likely to buy what you have to offer. This applies to the platforms you choose to use. Make sure that you research thoroughly which social media platforms your audience is most likely to be on. Twitter is an answer, but it is not the right answer for everyone!
8. Limit the amount you post
Don’t broadcast all the time. People follow your accounts for two reasons: they either have a connection to your brand or you provide them with useful and engaging content. Don’t inundate them with posts and story updates. If you do, you become spam and no one pays attention to you.
9. Don’t remove issues immediately
You read that right! Don’t take a negative comment or complaint down immediately. Work it out, provide a solution. This shows consumers that you care and are willing to make an effort to rectify a problem. Only take it down if it can’t be resolved.
10. Personality is key
Your posts on social media determine the personality and voice of your business, so don’t have the personality of a wall. Your brand needs a consistent voice and you want to provide a familiar and comfortable atmosphere on your social media platforms to nurture and grow relationships. It doesn’t matter if there are multiple people who take care of the social accounts – the voice needs to be the same.
Now that you know which things to avoid doing on social media, it is important to remember that social media advertising is a game of strategy and if you want to win then you have to deploy the right one.
