While social media marketing might seem like a simple concept at first, it is anything but. Anybody can open a social media account and start posting, but only a handful truly succeed with their efforts. And this is mainly because they commit simple mistakes that could easily be avoided. Here are some of these mistakes and how you can avoid them.
Posting Content with Absolutely No Strategy
A lot of people make the mistake of posting content with no strategy or forethought whatsoever. Your content has to be tailored to your audience and varied depending on which platform you’re using. For instance, the content you’ll post on Twitter will have to be vastly different than anything you put on Facebook due to certain limitations. Also, the frequency at which you post content is essential as well.
Spying on your competition is the best way to gauge which type of content works on which platforms. It will also give you a sense of when is the best time to post a certain type of content and at what frequency. There are tons of tools available that will allow you to spy on your competition such as Topsy, which will allow you to check the type of tweets your competition is posting ranked by popularity. Tools like FanpageKarma will allow you to track your competitor’s Facebook activity and emulate their efforts.
Posting Bad Content
Not only do most people not have a solid strategy in place when posting content but they put a little thought into what type of content they’re going to post. Your content should be highly informative and relevant and not be based purely on selling.
Unfortunately, not everybody understands what makes good content. If you’re unsure about your content creation skills, a company such as digital marketing company Single Grain could help you manage your content and give you tips on which type of content would be more suited for you audience. They’ll also be able to give you pointers on which times are better for specific types of content.
Being Inconsistent with your Efforts
This is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes you can commit as a social media marketer. Suddenly going silent is a sure-fire way to show your audience that you don’t care. Even if you have the best product in the world and that you genuinely care about your customers, this will reflect negatively on your brand.
You need to understand that once you engage with your audience, you can’t stop. Your social media page will become an extension of your customer service. Going silent on complaints will reflect very badly on you and could cause irreparable damage to your brand’s image.
It’s very easy to ruin your social marketing efforts if you don’t know what you’re doing. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools and resources out there to help. Make sure that you steer clear from the three mistakes mentioned in this article if you don’t want to your social media marketing campaign to fail.
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