Every brand needs a social media presence. But many don’t quite get it right. From constant sales pitches to ignoring comments, let’s take a look at some of the most common mistakes you may be making with your social media.

1 – Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Not knowing your target audience is one of the biggest mistakes you can make on social media. If your content does not resonate with your audience you won’t receive anywhere near the engagement levels you expect. Before you even start posting, you should consider whether your audience will be interested in the content that you are producing and sharing.

It’s important to consider if your audience is the same on all your social platforms. For example, your audience on LinkedIn may expect a different kind of content from that on Instagram or TikTok. 

For example, a construction company may be best to focus its recruitment efforts on platforms like TikTok, showcasing what it’s like to work for their company to a large Gen Z audience that is beginning to enter the workforce. On the other hand, they could focus more on their business relationships and community projects on LinkedIn, to continue to connect with their clients and potential future business partners.

2 – Not Having a Clear Social Media Strategy

To make sure you don’t become just another brand floating through the social media space, you need a social media strategy. Many brands will attempt to jump on as many trends as possible to try and go viral. This may result in short-term gains, but it is not a sustainable long-term strategy for building an engaged audience that is interested in what your business has to say.

You must first look at what your main goal of posting on social media is. A strategy for a business that wants to grow its digital footprint will be much different to a business looking to drive traffic to its website. 

Having a clear strategy in place will ensure that all your posts have a purpose and that you are not just posting for the sake of posting.

A great way to know what kind of strategy you need is to align it with your business goals. If you are looking to scale rapidly, then a different strategy is required. In fact, new business is rarely driven solely through organic social media, so usually a multi-channel approach is required.

3- Not Engaging With Others

Be more social! It’s literally in the name. Engaging on social media is a great way to build your overall presence as well as benefit from the algorithm.

For B2C businesses replying to comments and engaging with those using your product or service is a great way to build relationships with your customers. Some may choose to review your product on social media, so be prepared to respond whether it is both positive or negative. Negative comments should never be deleted, instead, invite the customer to elaborate on their issue and see if you can resolve it for them.

For B2B businesses, you may start by engaging with your existing clients and business partners. This way, you can leverage their reach and grow, as well as remind them of your presence on the platform. From here you can get into discussions with both your existing audience and their further audience. B2B businesses sometimes struggle to explain their proposition in an engaging way. That’s why engaging with your network and gathering their questions and answering them in the right way is crucial.

TikTok recently revealed that ‘Good TikTok Citizens’ would be favoured by the algorithm. By engaging with other people’s videos, you will be marked as a good citizen and get your content boosted as a result.

4 – Posting Off-Brand Content

All content that comes from your brand’s social media should be firmly anchored to your brand. And this doesn’t just mean having your logo in the bottom right corner. 

A common mistake people make is thinking that branding is just your logo and colours. However, branding is much more than that. Ensuring that all written visual and video content can easily be identified as one business is crucial to maintaining your brand on social media.

However, for some platforms such as TikTok, you may need to stray away from the brand book to engage your audience. It’s much more important that you have an instantly recognisable brand voice, without the need for colours or logos.

5 – Constantly Trying to Sell Your Products

No one likes to be sold to. That’s why constantly bombarding your audience with sales pitches is not the answer. People use social media to either be entertained or to be educated. Using these in your content will help set you apart from the competition. 

Using organic social media purely to generate leads and sales will not produce the results you expect. All marketers will agree that organic socials should be used predominantly for building your brand presence in a top-of-funnel approach. If you are looking to convert, then paid social is a much better strategy.

However, this does not mean you cannot promote your product or service. A post purely focused on generating sales is fine once in a while, but audiences will get bored very quickly once they realise that they are being sold to. Instead, opt for informative content showing your product or service being used and give them teasers of what they can expect from your business.

6 – Not Monitoring Comments and DM’s

Making sure you monitor your direct messages and comments is very important. Often, your audience may ask questions about your product and service, so you need to be prepared to answer these. This helps build relationships with potential customers as well as those that have already bought your product or service.

On the other hand, you will receive negative comments about your business or your content. As tempting as it can be to delete these, don’t! (unless they break the platform’s community guidelines of course.) The best course of action is to respond to their concerns and invite them to direct message you further details.

As for your direct messages, you should always be monitoring them for questions about your business as well as seeing those that are reviewing your product or service. Some people are also likely to send their problems directly as they are likely to expect a quick response.

7 – Posting infrequently on your channels

Consistency is key! Those businesses that make themselves visible on at least a weekly basis are setting themselves up for social media success. Each platform has different guidelines on how often you should post, but make sure you ensure you know how many times you will post a week, and making sure that you stick to your social calendar is very important.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to post every day, but having a solid strategy in place that you stick to is essential.

8 – Not Using The Correct Aspect Ratios For Your Posts

Repurposing content is a dream for marketers. But making slight tweaks for each platform you use can be the difference between the success and failure of a post. Each platform has slightly different aspect ratios for posts. For example, whilst you can post landscape images on Instagram, square posts perform much better.

As for videos, portrait aspect ratios are crucial when posting reels, and to TikTok. Short-form video is one of the most popular forms of content right now, so making sure you are giving your content the best chance to shine on each platform is important.

It is now best practice when recording video to consider how you will also use your video in a portrait format. Things like ensuring the main focus is in the middle of the screen as much as possible. Trust us, your video editors will thank you for it.

9 – Ignoring The Importance of Video

Having a strong video presence is crucial in the social media world. Not only are social media platforms prioritising video, but it is also a fact that video content sells. 9/10 buyers say that video helps them come to a purchase decision. However, video content doesn’t need to be expensive. Just look at TikTok, the most engaging videos on the platform are people talking directly to the camera. You don’t need expensive cameras and equipment to do this.

This does not mean that high-production video is no longer relevant. Having a strong showreel or hero product ad can help make a difference in a sale. This can work in tandem with videos produced on your mobile phone to supplement it. 

10 – Just Trying to go Viral

Asking your social media team to simply ‘go viral’ is not a get-rich-quick strategy. So jumping on every new trend is neither beneficial for sales nor building an engaged audience. When done right, it can help promote your business to a much wider audience than usual. 

However, as important as it is to be reactive when it comes to trending topics, it’s much more important to know if you should react. The best brands will refrain from jumping on every viral moment, instead waiting for the perfect opportunity to do so, that is relevant to their industry.

Being able to react quickly is why a social media strategy is so important. ‘Going viral’ should not be the goal, but a by-product of the engaging and entering content that you have produced.

It is important to remember the core reason people use social media. To be entertained, informed and make connections with like-minded people. Simply using your business’s organic social media as a mouthpiece for making more sales will not work. If you would like to know more about how you should build your social media marketing strategy, get in touch with the team here at Marketing Elect. 

M – connect@marketinglect.com

P – 01245 363419