There is no doubt that social media platforms
today when used properly, have a huge potential to provide businesses with an
opportunity to increase:
·
The reach of their posts
·
Web traffic to their websites
·
Quality leads from different social platforms
·
Conversion of social followers into loyal customers
·
Sales volumes and
·
Business growth.
However, the key here is to use these
platforms properly and avoid the common mistakes that businesses and marketers
often make. This will ensure that there is no damage done to the reputation of
your brand and make the best of everything that social media has to offer to
get the most out of it.
The most significant mistake
businesses make is to try to be present on all of the social media networks
available at once. Research says that most of the companies want to be present
and rely on at least three to four social networks for branding from the following list:
·
Facebook
·
Twitter
·
LinkedIn
·
YouTube and
·
Instagram.
This is the wrong approach. Ideally, you
should use only those platforms that are suitable for your brand and specific
industry and that two only a couple of them.
For example, if your site relies heavily
on images and graphics, use sites like Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest. are
ideal. On the other hand, if your site gives professional advice, using Twitter
and LinkedIn is your best bet.
Not Defining Goals and Audience
Just like you should choose networks based
on the time you spend most on them, you must also define your goals and audience to
yield the highest ROIs from your social media marketing campaigns and your target
audience.
Clear and well-defined goals and the audience will
help you to:
·
Make a proper analysis
·
Find simple ways to build your social profile
·
Establish your authority on social media and
·
Meet the needs of the search engine
algorithms.
All these will ensure that your social media marketing attracts more social followers and drives them towards
your site to generate sizable traffic.
However, it is not easy to know who
your audience is. You can overcome this challenge and set up your marketing strategy
and goals by asking a few questions such as who are the ones that you
made the products for? It could be anyone from:
·
The adults
·
The adolescents
·
Men and to
·
Women.
When you know your target audience, it
will be easy for you to determine the kind of results they expect from you and
design the ideal social media campaign.
This will also help you to set and
work around specific parameters to achieve your goals and set up varied KPIs. Make it a point to be more specific in your
approach so that you get a higher engagement rate, create more brand awareness, and
drive more traffic to your website.
Not having a Plan to Measure KPIs
Most marketers and businesses do not
have a proper marketing plan in place and do not measure the KPIs either. Without
a proper plan to follow, social media marketing will be a huge waste of time.
A proper plan will enable you to:
·
Create a strategy to design your content that
will resonate with your target audience
·
Set specific goals making them easy to achieve
and know what to expect
·
Allocate proper budgets and outlines.
In short, your plan will help you to
know what and how to accomplish your goals. In addition to that, it will, more
importantly, help you to measure results, the KPIs as well as the resources that
you will need to use.
It will also prevent you from
measuring the wrong KPIs, another common mistake made by businesses during
social media marketing. You should not fall into the trap like them and measure
the vanity metrics only and restrict it to the number of your fans on Facebook
or followers on Instagram
and Twitter and
be happy if it is growing. Ideally, you must measure the impact of your social
media efforts on your business and not simply on the growing numbers.
Not Focusing on the Analytics
Overlooking the analytics is another common mistake made by businesses which you should certainly; avoid getting more
social traffic to your site. If you do not have any actionable insights, then
there is no need to use social media for your business marketing efforts.
Measuring the success of your social media marketing is nothing different from measuring
the success of your email marketing campaigns and SEO.
When you use the right data analytics
software, you will not only be able to track and assess the performance
metrics on social media but will also make the necessary amendments based on the metrics provided by the platform as well as the external software,
which you should ideally use.
Tools like Google Analytics will help
you to:
·
Ensure additional functionality
·
Track the shares
·
Analyze the traffic source to your site and
even
·
The likelihood of them converting to leads and
sales.
There are a lot of different analytical tools that have very useful and innovative features that will also help
you to measure and know:
·
The quality of your followers
·
The extent of the influence of your SMM
·
The popularity of your posts
·
The data required to help you in your future
social media marketing efforts
·
The social KPIs and define them and
·
The demographic and engagement factors.
All these will make your social
marketing much simpler and your efforts more productive.
Lacking Brand Consistency
Lastly, you must be consistent and
know the unique essence of your brand. This will help you and your SMM shine through your efforts and content. This will help you to create and sustain
a powerful brand authority.
Just know that consistency does not
mean monotony and therefore make sure that you do not use the same content over
and over. Maintain variety, experiment with different formats, focus on your brand
mission, voice, tone, look, and feel, and never copy the style and format of other
brands.
Pete Campbell is a social media
manager and has immense knowledge about email marketing and Instagram
promotion. He delights his clients by helping them buy real Instagram likes as
well as buy followers for Instagram. He loves to travel, write, and play
baseball.
No comments:
Post a Comment