There is no doubt that social media will boost any business’s social status, no matter the products or services rendered. It remains one of the most utilized internet platforms with a population of over 2.6 billion users across the globe in 2018. The platform offers businesses the chance to connect with followers and make brand awareness to people far and near. Moreover, social media is the best for creating buzz around your new products and getting more sales for your business.
Although many companies have been embracing the use of public networks in their marketing strategy, some are yet to make reasonable success because of the horrible mistakes they have been committing. These blunders are usually committed unconsciously, and they can cause more harm to your business than having no public media presence at all. This article focuses on highlighting the common mistakes made by small and large enterprises on social media. And also teach them the best practices to emulate as they wish to maximize its benefits to the growth of their company. Below are the mistakes to be avoided in social media marketing.
1. Avoiding and counterattacking negative feedbacks
Naturally, this would be the reaction of anybody to false and negative comments on social media. It seems like it poses a threat to the development of your business, but reacting bad will makes it come to reality. The act of deleting and counterattacking follower’s comments will portray your business as a coward, and people will interpret that action as incompetency.
Instead of responding with a harsher statement, companies should develop the habit of resolving the problem in a friendly tone. You should make it a point of duty to provide a solution to the difficulty a follower is encountering in the usage of your products or making a purchase. By doing this, your business can convert such person to a buyer and gain more customer loyalty. Creating bad sentiments for business is the last thing you want to do.
2. Thinking all public media are the same
Most businesses always fall into this trap easily. This mistake occurs when a company approaches different social media with the same method. For instance, sharing hands-on videos on Twitter, which is specially created for sharing news, short content, updates, and promotions. Each social media have its unique features, marketing tools, and users. Therefore, they demand different social media marketing strategies.
Some businesses are better off on some social media because they do no house their potential buyers. For example, professionals and business people are usually found on LinkedIn. It will be a waste of time and resources to target them on Instagram that is populated with teenagers and celebrities.
3. Being impersonal
Being impersonal implies that your social network pages lack a human touch. Businesses should try as much as possible to avoid being too formal in their content tone. They have had enough of that at their working place. To stop them from scrolling, companies should implement the conversational tone or prepare their post in the form of blog posts.
Also, if possible, companies should forbid the use of chatbots in managing their conversation with followers on social media. These bots are programmed to emulate human conversation, but they are not so perfect in understanding slangs and public network acronyms. And enterprise should not forget that not all their fans are sound English speakers and writers, which means that using chatbots utilization may end up in ineffective communication or avoidance of feedbacks.
4. Too much concern on brand promotion
It is very easy to commit this blunder when you are also serious about making a profit through your social media campaign. Yes, the main goal indeed focuses on getting more sales for your business. But all the same, companies should not forget the ethics that public network is for socializing, communicating, and sharing ideas. Therefore, companies should spare out days in their schedule to discuss something different from their services and products. These contents can be on the approaching sport event coming up close to your company’s location. It may also be on fitness and healthy living, life hacks, or securing their social media accounts from hackers. Being too goal-centric can bore your followers on public networks.
5. Ignoring data
Not tracking and measuring results is another mistake frequently made by social media marketers. There is no point in spending time and resources on a marketing strategy and not reviewing its effectiveness. Appraisal to the brain behind social media, for devising a method for businesses to see the analytical performance of their posts. Facebook, for example, provides users with the number of likes and list of comments received by post. Meanwhile, this is not enough for measuring your success on the public networks. Tools like Buffer and BuzzSumo can give a total breakdown of what your company has in leads, sentiments, clicks, and engagement.
This action will enable your business to make a decision on what to optimize and the cost to cut-off.
6. Purchasing followers
Businesses should not even think of this at all. If there is social media sin, it will be one of them. Most companies always opt for this option considering a large number of followers will bring about more sales. Meanwhile, social media marketing is not all about having big fans but growing loyal followers. This method will result in no achievement because these followers are not familiar with your brands, and you may not be able to match the content tone of the seller brand. Moreover, they might feel cheated or used on discovering what you have done, leading to your account being banned or deleted forever.
Another like this is the act of gaining fans through giveaways. Sincerely, your business is going to have lots of admirers within few days. But guess what? They don’t care what your business has to offer. All they want is your gifts. You haven’t built your brand followers but a list of goody’s winners on the social media.
