9 mistakes that must be avoided in social media marketing

Social media marketing is becoming more and more popular these days, people who were left out in traditional marketing now have started to focus on social media platforms. But when shifting their understanding of traditional marketing into social media marketing many people do mistakes and hence could not make most out of their social media efforts. Social media is the platform where businesses can catch extra audience, increase their brand visibility and of course increase sales. Today almost 90% of businesses use social media, but is social media all about updating the status time to time and remain unconcerned with consumer behavior? This is what many people think about social media when they misunderstand the social media marketing, having one, two or few of the following mistakes, is a clear indication of misunderstanding social media marketing.

1- No strategy in place

Social media strategy plays an important role in marketing, businesses who have their social media marketing strategy in place yield 10 times better results than others who do not follow any strategic approach. Strategy includes; setting clear goals and objectives, creating milestones to achieve, develop content strategy with clear motives, defining, engaging and targeting audience and many more. Businesses having great content to share without predefined targeted strategy would not deliver favorable results.

2- No platforms integration

Social networks serve best when they are integrated together. Managing networks separately with no connections at all would consume lot of time, money and energy as well as restrict reach. Integrating the social networks would multiply the audience and reach.

3- No images in the posts

Images have great impact on viewers and create 200 percent more engagement as compared to normal text messages. Images that beautifully depict the message would encourage more viewership and engagement.

4- Not using hashtags

Hashtags are very helpful in maximizing the reach especially in twitter and Instagram. Hashtags allow users to integrate their posts in previous trending discussions and hence have the capability of being viewed by more audience. Carefully chosen hashtags would provide you with extra visibility and engagement mechanism.

5- Having no focused voice

Companies using social media networks should not be using them like personal use and should focus on business interests. This means having non-serious, funny, inauthentic and irrelevant updates would affect the social audience in a negative way. Although little humorous, creative, challenging and informative updates would keep the followers alive on your networks. Also sticking to the similar and repetitive updates would also affect companies credibility.

6- Not using images, using wrong size or using irrelevant images

It is believed and widely accepted that social media audience is very much inclined towards images. Almost 50% or more people respond to the images better than normal text based updates. Another problem with posts is that when smaller images are used. People do not pay much attention to smaller or low-resolution images as they have to often scroll down quite fast and they stop where images are clear and have and have clear depiction. Depiction is also very important to consider only throwing the idea that is relevant to the post makes it more reliable otherwise this it would seriously affect the credibility of updates in the long run. Image sizes should be around 1000 X 1000 pixels or 1200 X 1200 pixels.

7- No or little interaction with followers

Interaction with followers is the basic function of social media, social media is meant to be more interactive in nature than any other form of marketing communication. Its brands responsibility to initiate interaction rather than waiting for consumers to start interaction. Not every question can be answered and not every comment can be replied back. Some comments doesn’t demand interaction but some comments require much attention. Businesses should have their complete interaction strategy and policy which should cover. When, How and where to start interaction as well as How to respond to the positive, negative and neutral comments.

8- Missing out platforms

Some businesses may have underestimated the value of some platforms. Most of the businesses are using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are their mainstream platforms, other might have an additional platforms like: Pinterest and Instagram. Although it is true that not every single platform can be utilized but analyzing platform’s importance is imperative. Google plus for instance, is the platform which is supported by Google and integrated with Google search engine which can provide with better results in organic search and improve sites ranking. Moreover circle and communities in Google Plus provides better targeting of followers.

9- Inappropriate content

Businesses should always focus on what type of content they should produce on different social media platforms. User’s interest, demand and engagement should remain the first priority of their strategy rest of the things like; sales can be worked out later. Companies should analyze successful companies on social media and then analyze their content strategy. Later they can analyze their direct competitor’s content and make necessary changes where required. Social media content strategy should increase followers, sharing and engagement.

Yasir Zeb

Digital marketing enthusiast and industry professional in Digital technologies, Technology News, Mobile phones, software, gadgets with vast experience in the tech industry, I have a keen interest in technology, News breaking.