Don’t Make These 9 Social Media Marketing Mistakes

1. Not having a strategy

Jumping in the deep end and blindly posting marketing messages on social media will get you nowhere fast. You need a well-planned social media marketing strategy in order to succeed. Read this post about how to create a clear, goal-oriented social media marketing plan to get started.

2. Focusing on the quantity of social media followers instead of their quality

It’s great to have hundreds of followers, but they’re not very useful if they aren’t interested in your products or services. A majority of Facebook users share product posts, so it’s important to identify people who are brand ambassadors and devise strategies to reach them.

3. Failing to create and post engaging content on a regular basis

Use your status updates to share something interesting and engaging with your followers. Hundreds of millions of people purchase products online — it’s important to capture and keep their attention if you want them to become customers and spread the word.

4. Not converting followers into paying customers

Conversions are vital for businesses. It’s wonderful when thousands of people share your posts, but you don’t benefit unless they purchase something from you. Only a minority of people who see advertised products on social media will take the next step and buy. This is why it’s important to create posts that are engaging and capture the attention of the people your products will benefit.

5. Having too many social media channels

Don’t spread yourself too thin! Keep your focus narrow and branch out from there. Many companies create accounts on numerous social media platforms, but don’t have the ability to spend quality time posting new content or engaging with followers. I’ve seen numerous businesses that signed up for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ — you name it — only to use the accounts sporadically or abandon them altogether. When someone visits your Twitter page and only sees 8 tweets from two years ago, it sends the message that you’re disorganized, don’t care, and that — by association — your products probably aren’t as good as those of your competitors.

6. Having no brand voice

Your brand’s voice both embodies and expresses your brand’s personality and values. To build trust and influence, it should be distinctive and unique. All of your updates should communicate in the same voice to build engagement. Make sure you publish content that is in a cohesive and consistent brand voice, or you risk confusing your most loyal fans or deterring would-be customers.

7. Spamming your audience

If you post too many updates that are only about selling your products, people will get the impression that you are spamming them and will stop following you. It’s best to serve up a mixture of content to your followers and fans that answers their questions and addresses the problems they are trying to solve, but not just content that you have created — it’s vital to share information from many sources to avoid being labeled as a spammer.

8. Handling everything manually

Posting all of your updates manually is very time-consuming. There are many tools that will enable you to manage all of your activities from a dashboard. You can schedule posts, engage with users, and track metrics more easily from one central location. Check out this post for a look at platforms that can manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives.

9. Publishing the same message across all of your channels

It’s important to mix things up. Sure, you want to promote the same product on all of your social media marketing accounts, but many people follow you on multiple channels. This means that they are receiving duplicate content and getting the impression that you aren’t very original, which will decrease their willingness to share your message or buy your products.