Throughout the entire month of November, our blog has been focused on social media marketing. Near the beginning of the month we gave you an introduction to social media marketing and how it can help your local business. We followed that post up with posts about how to use Facebook and Instagram successfully. Those posts contained great tips for helping you get started down the right path. To finish the month off, we want to give you some common social media marketing mistakes to avoid.
As you learn the ropes of social media marketing with the use of our recent blog posts that were discussed above, you are bound to make a few mistakes. That is just how it goes when you are getting into something that is both new and incredibly stressful. But on the bright side, Focused Engagement is here to help you by dropping some knowledge that we have gathered over our years of social media marketing experience. Here are our top common social media marketing mistakes to avoid so that you can earn more success and keep your business’ social media presence running smoothly.
Social media marketing mistakes to avoid
Do not ignore users who engage with you
This is at the top of the list for our common social media marketing mistakes to avoid for good reason. We have discussed this before, but it is so important that we wanted to touch on it again. When you post interesting content and someone decides to engage with you, it is imperative that you respond to them. Even if they make a joke, try your best to give them a response. Customers like when a brand replies to them. This can help create a positive image of your local business in their head.
Do not buy fake followers
If you are barely starting your social media marketing strategy and are not seeing quick results, you may be tempted to purchase fake followers. Fake followers are randomly generated accounts that boost your follower count to make you look more popular, but do not increase engagement. These accounts do not have interest in your business, so they do not do anything good for you.
Fake followers may be very cheap (thousands can cost less than $20), but they are not worth it in the end. Not only does this fraudulent practice break rules on every social media site, it also goes against the algorithms they have in place. Purchasing these followers could actually have a negative effect on your business by not allowing your posts show up in the feeds of your actual human followers. You do not want this to happen, so it is best to keep grinding and grow your followers organically.
Stick to your social media policy
No matter the size of your company, you should have a social media policy in place. This policy should contain guidelines about what is allowed to be posted on company accounts. By having this policy in place, you will protect yourself from posting anything that could be viewed as racist, sexist, homophobic, or offensive in any way. We recommend teaching all employees about this policy, regardless of if they are involved with social media at all. Only allow people that actually need access to your account to manage it so you can minimize the potential for any costly slip-ups.
Avoid switching between different tones
A goal you should have from day 1 of your social media marketing journey is to keep a consistent tone. Whether you want to be silly or serious, it is a good idea to stick with whichever tone you choose at the beginning. The last thing you want to do is show your users that you flip flop between different tones and cannot decide on one. If you keep switching tones, users may find your account annoying and create a negative image of your local business in their head.
Don’t post the same content in the same way on different platforms
Believe it or not, each social media platform that you could potentially use is very different. These platforms have different rules, post formats, and engagement methods that you must consider while creating posts. You do not want to post your Facebook posts in the same exact way as your Twitter posts. When you do this, it just looks weird and may make you lose credibility to your desired audience. Be sure to heavily consider what you post on each platform before it goes live so that you do not lose followers and potential business.