3 Bad Habits You Might Be Making with Your Social Media Marketing
January 30, 2019
Social media has become an integral part of all business marketing, but let’s face it, with so many sites to post on and so many mediums to choose, it gets easy to post quantity over quality. Aside from the “lazy poster” tactic that many companies fall into the trap of, there are several other bad habits to avoid when sending content out into Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even Pinterest.
The point of using social media marketing is to create engagement, foster customer interaction, and in turn promote traffic and revenue at your home site. Unfortunately, bad social media habits can do just the opposite. So, what are the most major habits to watch out for this year? Here are 3 bad habits you might be encountering and how to rectify them.
1. Not Telling Your Brand’s Story: Social media is all about the daily posts: what are people eating today, where are people going today, and who did people see and snap photos with today? While a business doesn’t have quite the same daily schedule or interesting day-to-day happenings, consumers are intrigued by stories. A news feed is more than just a place to post the latest sale campaign or contest your business is putting forward, it’s the spot to show consumers who you are as a brand and make them want to interact with you.
A big mistake many businesses are making in 2019 is ignoring the “Story” when creating social media content. Not sure how to get started? Try taking a large post and turning it into three smaller posts, each with its own catchy call to action or engaging visual content. Start with a video which stems into a collection of photos, which then finishes with a contest outline or invitation for consumer input. These compilation pieces make consumers take a second look and think, “Didn’t I see something about this yesterday? This is different; let’s see what they’re saying today.”
This fragmented method of delivering daily content doesn’t just have to be in relation to an upcoming promotion or sale. You can use the same type of chopped up post to show consumers a new product line. Rather than posting all 4 new products at once, send them out into the social media internet-verse one at a time. A photo and write up of each product, a link to the sales page, and a quirky call to action for each post will have customers interested and watching for the next post in no time.
2. Ignoring Your User Analysis Numbers: Social media is fun, engaging, and interactive, but it’s also a marketing tool, and like all other marketing tools, it must be monitored. Graphing numbers isn’t everyone’s idea of a fun Friday night, which is why there are so many tools out there for download which will do it for you. Social media only works if you pay attention to what these numbers are telling you. Yes, you’ll still have followers, and any outpouring of content which could potentially lead back to your website is good; but you don’t want to waste your time.
Companies who don’t properly monitor their social media accounts run the risk of repeating a poorly received post or missing the chance to capitalize on a popular theme. Running analytics once a month will keep you in the know of what’s popular and what isn’t working. Keeping track of this information will help you conceive new content concepts, create greater consumer engagement, and promote higher rates of traffic to your website.
3. Leaning on Social Media Marketing Alone: Social media plays a huge role in today’s marketing world, but it’s still not big enough of an influence to run the whole show alone. One problem that new business owners face is relying too heavily on social media for all the work than traditional marketing does. Of course, every business model is different and depending on your target audience, your promotions could be more social media based. However, no campaign should rely on social media and nothing else. It completely limits the consumers who see your campaign, the mediums used to display it, and what you can say and display.
Social media marketing is a great and inexpensive way to get your brand out there, interact with customers and promote awareness of your company and products. Combining this type of advertisement with other traditional methods will bring home a larger crowd and influence those consumers who don’t spend their days on Snapchat and Instagram. This doesn’t mean you need to start investing in billboards and commercials, but maybe investigate online ads and pay per click options along with your social media campaigns.
While it’s true that there’s no right or wrong way to market your business in this modern age of “outside of the box” thinking, there are a few tried and true tactics which shouldn’t be ignored. Consider what’s worked best in the past and monitor your ongoing efforts for success and failure. Where you see your campaigns slipping, take the time to stop the clock, refocus your process and restart with a renewed sense of the task at hand.
When in doubt, it never hurts to call in a team of professionals, even if only for a temporary period while you fine tune your marketing strategy. Many social media marketing firms are open to acting in an advisory role, rather than a hands-on position.