Social media is only advantageous if you use it correctly. There are a few traps that you want to avoid falling into if you want to establish trust in your brand. You don’t want to waste valuable marketing resources or worse, alienate your target audience and damage your brand’s reputation. Let’s take a look at the most common mistakes we see companies making today.
Using social media like one long sales pitch
DO NOT treat your social media feeds like one endless sales pitch. There’s no bigger turn off to your audience than bombarding them with posts the promote your services/products peppered with calls to action. Avoid this common mistake by following the 80/20 rule: 20 percent of the time your posts will be sales associated. The other 80 percent will be devoted to informative, educational posts that will benefit your customer base. Position yourself as a knowledgeable leader on social media, it well help you establish trust with your clients’ in the long run.
Posting low quality images
I know that it may seem like social media is a less formal marketing channel, but the quality of images and video are just as important as other other marketing platform. The majority of social media platforms of focus on the visual so don’t use out-of-focus, blurry, or dark images. If your followers can’t see value in your images, how can you expect them to believe that there’s value in your services or products. So do yourself a favor, invest in a good camera, find the best light, and locate the most striking images. Great pics last a lifetime and represent value, don’t miss out.
Not all Platforms are created equal
So you’ve created all this great content for your brand, but do you know how to properly share it on the correct platforms? This is one of the most common mistakes businesses make- they post the same article, with the same caption on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in hopes to receive the same amount of engagement on each one.
In reality, platforms can differ greatly for each other, each requiring a unique approach. Tailor your content specifically for each one. Do your research, familiarize yourself with the right style for you brand, and start customizing your posts to have the greatest possible effect.
Thinking quantity is more important than quality
Despite popular belief, the number of followers is not representative of a killer social media strategy. The more followers you have means the more potential clients, right? Wrong. What you need to be more concerned with is the quality of followers. The key is to achieve a steady growth of followers the closely align with your target market. You want a following of decision makers or clients-in-waiting within your industry.
Do not buy followers. You want the content you’re producing and sharing about your products or services to bring followers in organically. Make and post great content and your followers will share those posts along with your page which will increase new followers that are in your target audience.
This concludes our list of the most common social media mistakes that you should steer clear of. For more on how to use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to engage with your clients, click here.