Social media marketing for small businesses is a lot of trial and error. You’re constantly performing A/B testing, dealing with platform changes, and trying to evaluate your customer and establish what type of content they like to engage with. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to social media so things can get confusing. I know we’ve made some mistakes that may have caused us to miss out on reach and engagement. So we want to share some of the top mistakes businesses make on social media so that you can avoid or stop doing them yourself.
7 Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Might Be Making
1. Being on all social media platforms.
Just because there’s a ton of social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to name the popular ones), doesn’t mean you need to be on all of them! The fewer networks you’re on, the better focused you’ll be. Better focused, better content.
We’re not saying you shouldn’t test out new platforms. You never know, that one could be where your key target audience is hanging out! We’re just saying it’s okay to decide to stop using some once you realize they don’t suit your business.
Not every social media platform is going to mesh with your target audience. If they aren’t on it, and you aren’t getting results, then you don’t need to be on it either! Each platform your business is on requires time and effort put into creating tailored content and engaging with your audience. Review your social media platforms and figure out which ones are performing and which ones aren’t. It’s time to drop the platforms that aren’t giving you a good ROI and focus on creating more quality content for the ones that are.
2. Focusing on quantity over quality.
A lot of people think that posting more frequently will help prevent your audience from missing your posts. However, sometime’s people get caught up in posting content. Posting to Facebook 4x a day isn’t going to make sure your content is filling up your audience’s newsfeed. Instead, it’s going to tell Facebook that you have a lot of posts with low engagement.
Don’t scramble to create/share content all the time. Plan out a reasonable schedule and make sure you’re only sharing your best content. These higher quality posts will resonate with your audience more and get you more engagement – which the Facebook algorithm likes.
3. Not replying to questions or comments on social.
Unfortunately, brands ignore 89% of comments they get on social media. Which doesn’t make sense because we know when a brand replies quickly to people on social media 70% of people are more likely to use the brand’s product or service, 65% of people have more brand loyalty, and 75% of people are likely to share a good experience on their own profile.
That’s why it’s super important to stay on top of your comments and messages and try to respond to people as soon as possible.
4. Not uploading native video.
We’re going to say this all the time: native videos are shared five times more than YouTube links on social media. If the platform you’re using allows for native video (even LinkedIn does now!) you should be uploading native video.
People don’t like to stop what they’re doing. If they’re on Facebook, they want to stay on Facebook. So they’d much rather watch your native video that they’ve come across while scrolling than follow your YouTube link.
5. Not optimizing video per platform.
We’re used to only creating landscape video and images because those were the best format for online. However, now we have more options. Both square and vertical videos are becoming more popular on certain platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all allow for square videos in the newsfeed and they actually take up 78% more screen space on mobile. Vertical video is also becoming popular because of both Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
6. Sharing only your content.
You might be afraid to share any curated content because it doesn’t lead to traffic to your site. However, you don’t want to drown your audience in too much of your own content. To avoid people getting tired of your posts, you can mix things up to help keep them interested. Curating other relevant, quality content, can increase your engagement and help grow your audience. We like to do this on our Twitter feed and share other interesting articles we find about social media and video marketing.
7. Not targeting specific audiences.
Targeting a preferred audience makes your content more relevant. We talked about how this can help in our previous blog post about increasing engagement. On social media, you can have fans from all over the words with all kinds of interests and jobs. If a certain post only applies to a specific area or someone with a specific interest, make sure you’re using the preferred audience tool.
By only showing your posts to people who will find it relevant, you’re increasing your chances of getting good engagement. And if your post is getting good engagement, Facebook will put it in front of even more people. Facebook also gives a personalized relevancy score to every post you can see and shows you the post that is most relevant to you first. By targeting a relevant audience, Facebook will be more likely to show your post to that audience instead of one from another brand that would be less relevant to them.
Now that you know the most common social media mistakes, you can avoid them. Have you found any other common social media mistakes? Let us know so we can keep this updated!