Social media could be considered as one of the best inventions ever made for business communication. Every day, more and more people use social media as a platform to reach out to other people, share experiences, and even make reports to government agencies. According to Statista.com there will be an estimated 2.55 billion social network users all over the planet by 2018. Facebook tops the list followed by Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and lastly, LinkedIn. With this exponential growth, companies are now using social media to advertise their products and services, and brand promotion to get more clients or customers. As a startup business owner, you would like to leverage all available tools which includes social media to let people know about your products or services. Now, what if you tried social media and it did not work well? Are you just going to abandon the campaign, move forward and try something else or are you going to step back and check what did not work.
You can search for guides and infographics on how to use social media for your business and probably a checklist for social media marketing, but have you thought of looking back to check what social media mistakes you did and see how to avoid it in the future? Doing this, you will definitely find the reason why your previous strategy did not work.
Here are 5 most common social media mistakes that you want to avoid.
- Too much, less and irregular updates
Too much of something is bad and it is also not good if it’s not enough. This is also true with social media for your business. If you keep on posting every 5 minutes, there is a tendency that your customers might feel that you are spamming them. You also might want to avoid less and irregularly scheduled updates. Every content has a life span and people will forget when they don’t hear from you. It would be a good idea to check your potential customer’s activity. When do they usually check their accounts and schedule your posting activity around that time so that you’ll have a bigger chance of being on top of their feeds. This way, you have a good probability of high visibility without spamming them.
- Posting Unrelated content
When posting on your social media accounts for your business, avoid posting unrelated content. Your followers will get confused on what industry you belong to if you keep doing it. Do not treat your business social media account as your personal account and just post whatever topic that comes to your mind. As a rule of the thumb, always stay within your niche. Do not just post anything just for the sake of posting. You need to think about your customers and what would be interesting to them rather than to you.
- Not Responding to Customers
Social media is place where you can find a lot of engagement. It will not be called social media if there are not interaction between groups of people. Conversation maybe positive or negative but think of it as a seesaw, it will not work if you’re alone. People are now more open to sharing what they like and don’t like. This is where you can listen from their feedback and concerns. Now it’s not just them giving you a gift, you need to leverage what you have learned from them and respond. This is your way of letting them know that you are listening and you’re human. If you receive any negative responses, you need to address them with respect and professionalism with a touch of humility. Make your followers feel special, encourage them to share their thoughts and engage in the discussions.
- Just focusing on getting a lot of followers
Everyone using social media dreams of having a million followers. But having a million followers doesn’t mean that you will have a million sales. Even though you have a thousand or a million followers, it is for certain that only a handful will be interested in the products or services you’re offering. Rather than focusing on having a lot of followers, reach out to people within your market niche and build a relationship with them. They will in turn, advertise your services or products within their own network and create a stronger market share of people interested in what you are offering.
- Avoid using canned responses
Be human. Engagement should be interactive, fun and warm. Let your followers know that you are human by having conversation when they leave a message or feedback. Leave the “common list of responses” at the side and focus on being genuine and engage in a productive conversation.
In conclusion, using social media marketing for your business requires you to maintain a regular schedule, a well thought of content and being human. Remember that you are reaching out to people looking for something interesting that will answer their concerns.
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