The world of social media is a continually evolving one, and one in which it seems that the pace of chance gets ever faster. With such an industry then comes a complicated landscape of strategies, tools and best practice guidelines, which are each as dependent upon the latest social media changes as the last. However there are some things that remain the same, which include the following, avoid at all costs, social media mistakes.
1. Targeting Every Platform: Attempting To Be All Things To All People
The list of social media websites continues to grow, and with it grows an amazing array of features. From the engaging picture based format of Instagram to the short, sharp and sweet interactivity of Twitter. So it makes sense to target every platform then, right?
Wrong!
You wouldn’t broadcast your advert on every TV channel or print your advert in every paper now would you? And why not? Because each of these have audiences of drastically varying demographics… so research who really caters to your target market, and don’t waste your time with unnecessary and unhelpful platforms.
2. Being Lax With Security
Being anything but super careful when it comes to your social media security can lead to unprecedented brand damage; being targeted and hacked, be it by pranksters or competitors, can lead to unauthorised updates that shock, offend and induce an influx of unfollows.
So follow good practice with your password, and make use of all of the security features that each platform offers.
3. Copying Content
Copying content is not only bad for your search engine ranking, but it could also be bad for your follower numbers. Un-originality is then a sure fire way to presenting yourself as, at best, un-imaginative and at worst, open to claims of plagiarism – not so great for your brand image.
4. Not Taking Advantage Of Social Media Tools
An essential element to any social media strategy is the right choice and correct use of social media management tools; these include well known web apps such as Hootsuite, Oktopost, and Bitly. Each of these apps boasts various features which include a mixture of: audience, strategy and engagement analysis; auto posting cross platforms; click tracking and even functions that will post at the optimal time (assessing how many people are online and how high quality an audience they are in terms of the demographics that you are targeting).
Social media success is hard work, so take every helping hand that you can get and be sure to research the tools listed above to find the one that will be most beneficial to the platforms that you use and the approaches that you adopt to social media marketing.
5. Ignoring The Rules Of The ‘Dinner Party’
Religion, Politics, Relationships: these things should never be discussed at a dinner party, and nor should they via social media. Sure, you should be personable, but getting personal with opinions and details of your private life should be avoided at all costs.
6. Buying Friends
Buying Likes, Fans and Followers not only looks obvious, but can actually see your social media accounts closed down altogether. Facebook and Twitter are getting increasingly savvy in the way they deal with such behaviour, so just don’t risk it.
7. Forgetting To Track Your Success
Forgetting to track success is perfect if you want to repeat time sapping tasks that reap no results; and if you love missing the things that do drive traffic to your website and turn followers into customers then all the better! If not however you need to keep a detailed record of all your social media tasks and couple this with analytics software, such as Google Analytics or a specific Social Media Management tool.
8. Posting Too Often, Too Little Or At The Wrong Times
It may feel impossible to know the perfect amount to update your social media feeds, and even more so deciding how often. Luckily some clever scientists have established some rather specific guidance:
- Twitter: Fourteen times throughout the day (Weekdays: From midnight to 10 p.m. Weekends: 7 times per day, from 3 a.m. to 9 p.m.)
- Facebook: Twice per day, 7 days a week (10:08 a.m. and 3:04 p.m.)
- LinkedIn: Once per day (8:14 a.m., no weekends)
- Google+: Twice per day (9:03 a.m. and 7:04 p.m., no weekends)
See related post and Infographic: The Secret Of Timing In Social Marketing
9. Not Giving Your Audience Reason To Move Beyond The Social Media Platform
To turn followers into customers you need to provide a reason for your audience to move from social media platform, over to your website; this can be achieved by producing fresh content that is useful to your target market, and posting it to your blog. Of course, blogging also serves numerous others purposes to boot, such as demonstrating your expert knowledge and building rapport over a set period of time.
10. Not Learning From Your Competition
Tracking your competition isn’t cheating: it’s a sensible and indeed often essential task to keep ahead in business. So check back to your competitor’s social media accounts often, and draw inspiration from their activity.
[Imagess – Main Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels]
Cormac Reynolds has written for over three years in the social media and Internet marketing arena and in that time has enjoyed learning and participating in and from a wide variety of blogs.
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