No Strategy

Perhaps the biggest and most common mistake that businesses make is blindly using social media without a strategy. Creating a strategy means you need to create clear and measurable goals; you need to create a set of procedures and policies as well as delegating roles.

You need to define your audience and what sort of message you want to send them. After you decide on these factors, you need to plan out a content calendar where you decide which messages will be posted on each specific platform to obtain the best results.

Advertising Too Much

Social media is a great way to advertise your products and service. Are you launching a new product or having a special sale? Great! Make sure you share this information with your followers. But constantly trying to sell your brand will get old very fast!

Instead, you should be mixing up the content that you post to facilitate engagement and establish authority in your field. Curate content that your audience will find meaningful and interesting; answer their questions and concerns; or you could simply create content that humanizes your brand.

So Many Platforms, So Little Time

There are many different social media platforms out on the web from social networking sites to online forums. Many companies make the mistake of trying to develop a presence on every social media platform. This sounds like a great idea right? After all the more mediums you’re on the more likely you are to reach a diverse audience, right?

In actuality, doing this can have negative ramifications because you’re spreading yourself too thin. You might begin neglecting your profiles on certain platforms or you could run the risk of mixing up your profiles and posting content that was not intended for that specific social site.

To solve this, you may want to review your social media strategy and pick a few networks to focus on because sometimes less is more. Which platform is best to deliver your message? Which platform has your biggest audience?

Not Using Images

A picture really is worth a thousand words! Studies show that audiences are more likely to respond and engage in posts that are visually appealing. After all, this is why social platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube are so popular. If you are not implementing visuals into your content, you could be making a costly mistake that can be easily fixed. You don’t need to be a master photographer to utilize photos. A simple search on Google or on iStock could sometimes do the trick.

Spamming

Have you ever followed a social media account that constantly updates their posts, which causes them to take up the majority of your News Feed? If you’re spamming your followers with a dozen or so updates a day, there’s a chance they will become annoyed and either adjust their settings to ignore your updates or just unfollow you altogether.

Remember, less is more. Try limiting your posts to social media to once a day. Furthermore, using analytic tools to figure out when the majority of your audience is online so that your messages can reach a greater number of your audience.

Failing To Track & Analyze Your Results

If you’re going to implement social media into your marketing efforts, you need to analyze results because understanding your performance is crucial to your campaign. Is your reach growing? Is your engagement increasing or decreasing? Are you converting followers and fans into customers? What sort of overall impact is your brand making in the online community.

It is important that you explore all the different Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Again, refer to your strategy and decide which metrics are important to you and if you achieved your goal. Once you have obtained your data, re-strategize if needed.