10 Social Media Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

Are you making these Social Media Mistakes?

The fact is, we don’t know what we don’t know. There is so much to know about social media, it’s virtually impossible to know everything! So how do we know when, as a small business, we are making social media mistakes?

The aim of this blog is to draw your attention to some of the most common mistakes and misconceptions around social media – those you might be doing yourself. It offers solutions to help you understand what to do instead, to improve your social media presence and get better results.

Mistake # 1:  Lots of Selling and Self Promotional Posts

Today’s savvy consumers don’t like to be sold to, especially on social media. We are very discerning when it comes to parting with our money. Spoilt for choice, we have comparison-shopping at our fingertips and tend to turn a blind eye to those incessant online sales pitches. Unless they really resonate with us, we simply swipe past them in our newsfeeds – gone and forgotten.

Constant promotional posting, regardless of its format, will get you little engagement. If you do this, you are making one of the most common social media mistakes. The result being that your followers will start to ignore those posts.

In fact the constant appearance of some ads in the newsfeed has become one of the major bugbears of social media users, particularly on Facebook. Ads only work when they add value to a user. By adding value I mean, that you address their needs, wants, desires and/or offer recognition and a solution to their problem.

It’s only when you have earned the right to promote to your audience, that they may take action. To earn the right to promote, firstly you need to establish interest and trust.

This marketing strategy has been coined “Social selling” – and yes it’s one of today’s buzzwords. I will explain this further in a future blog, but for now, here’s the gist:

Social selling is about connecting with current and would-be customers to create and nurture relationships

 

So what does this mean?

In essence it means that you should focus your content strategy to be always be useful

• Be of service
• Give away information
• Respond to comments on your page
• Join and interact with groups. Ask and answer questions
• Engage with your customer’s posts in your newsfeed – comment, like and share them
• Read your customer’s blog posts and comment on or share them
• Endorse clients on LinkedIn, offer reviews

All of these actions create trust between you and your customers. It’s the law of reciprocity – do something nice for someone and they may return the favour. Once you have created this trust, go ahead and throw in a promotional post to your content mix. You will be more likely to get a result.

Mistake # 2:  Too much Selling and Self Promotion – the 70/20/10 Rule

Ideally you should aim for the 70/20/10 rule on content mix. Following this rule will prevent you from making one of the biggest social media mistakes around.

70% of your posts should add value and build brand recognition. Things like your own meme, infographic or a quote creation that will be shared. Or a relevant article or blog creation.

20% should be sharing other people’s posts, blogs, articles, videos, tweets etc. Ensuring they are relevant to your brand and of interest to your target market.

10% of your posts should be promotional. Ads, competitions, discounts, announcements etc.

Don’t be Boring.

Keep your followers interested.

Sell the Benefit (The Why) NOT the What

Mix up your content with

• Snippets of information that will help customers in their daily lives
• Articles and blog posts
• Infographics and memes
• 1-2 minute videos or a Facebook Live
• Q&As
• Webinars and podcasts
• Interviews with clients and influencers in your industry
• Behind the scenes photos: Once in a while post something ‘social’– take selfies and photos of your team, your office or something remarkable a team member has achieved, a hobby or event.
  * Audiences love to see behind the scenes images and videos. They generate a lot of engagement and it helps the audience to get to know the people behind the business. This establishes a personal connection.

If you are stuck for ideas to create engagement, my ebook will help. It has plenty of ideas for posts on Facebook. You can download it here:  The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Engagement.

Always create posts with this thought in mind:  Is this content valuable, is it likeable and shareable? If not, rework it.

Mistake # 3:  Not Understanding your Target Market

Knowing and understanding your target audience is one of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy. It certainly prevents one of the biggest social media mistakes – not knowing who you are ‘talking’ to.

Who are your marketing messages for? Perhaps you think your audience is largely male. Check your Analytics (The Insights Tab on Facebook/Instagram), you might be surprised to find that your audience is younger or older than that you thought.

Before you start any social media campaign, understanding your target audience is imperative. Otherwise, you are just flying blind.

One of the biggest mistakes do-it-yourself marketers make on social media is trying to appeal to everyone. Your product or service may appeal to a broad range of people, but you will find your marketing much easier (and cheaper) if you pick your predominate target audience and market to them.

You might decide to have more than one target audience, that’s fine, but don’t get too broad. Customers outside your target audience will respond to your marketing if they need or want your product.

Do Your Research

Once you conduct your research and clearly define your target audience you will never be stuck for content again. When you understand how your product or service fits into their daily or business lives, your value statement will become clear to you.

You will know what marketing messages to use, and you will understand how to relate to your customers.

If you don’t know your target market well –  start doing your research. Understand as much about them as you can.

Research both their demographics (age, location, marital status, children, income etc.)  and their psychographics )hobbies, spending habits, values, wants needs, why they buy etc.).

Mistake # 4:  Lack of ‘Understanding’ on how Social Media Works in your Business

Social Media Shouldn’t Be Your Only Marketing Tool

One of the most common misconceptions small businesses have about social media is thinking that because their product is so great, putting up a few nice posts will instantly attract loads of new clients.

This thinking is one of the most popular social media mistakes. It doesn’t happen like that. Marketing is hard. There is a lot of competition. The most successful businesses are not necessarily the ones with the best product, they are the ones with the best marketing. They don’t just use social media.

They use social media in conjunction with other marketing tools, as part of their ‘marketing mix’. They have a website set up to optimise leads and use automated email campaigns. They also use the more traditional marketing tools – networking, events, speaking engagements and off-line advertising.

Expecting Immediate Results

Whether you go it alone or use a social media manager, don’t expect things to happen overnight. It’s a process that takes time.

Each business is unique and what works for one business may not work for yours. Strategies need to be tested and may need reworking before they achieve an outcome.

Do It Yourself Social Media

Many small businesses want to do their own social media. They hand it over to the office junior with the large Instagram following, or the wife or ‘friend’ who knows how to use it. This can be a mistake.

Just because someone has a large ‘following’ doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to generate a targeted following for your business. It’s not about the number of likes; it’s about the quality of those numbers.

Social media should be used as a tool to attract qualified leads, the ones likely to do business with you.

But if you really want to go it alone, here’s some advice:

Educate yourself

•  Do some training and continue to learn.
• There’s lots of information out there – just make sure it’s up-to-date. Trends and fads come and go. Tools and strategies change so often you need to keep up the pace.
• Understand how to create and then implement a social media strategy.
• Be prepared to spend at least an hour a day posting and engaging with followers, visiting and engaging with groups and client pages. As well as time developing content.
• Plan a budget for tools and equipment, images, graphic designers, content creators and advertising.
• Plan how to implement social media into your business. Who will be responsible for it? Will your team be encouraged to participate? Who will create ads and write blogs?  How will you monitor results?
• Review the amount of time that needs to be spent. You might decide that engaging a professional social media manager might be more time and cost effective.

Hire a Social Media Manager

Out of interest I recently Googled the term ‘social media’.

In 0.78 seconds it responded with 1,210,000,000 results.

There’s a lot to know about social media.

Social media is one of the most powerful brand building tools there is, but only if it is managed properly. It’s important that your followers get fresh content on a regular basis – in order for your business, products and service to stay top of mind. For customers to get value from following your social platforms they need to be engaged in what you are sharing – regular, interesting, up-to-date and valuable content.

Managing content can be an incredibly time consuming task, one that business owners find difficult to take on themselves without sacrificing another area of their business.

Handing this over to a professional will result in more time available for you to focus on what you do best, while your social media presence remains in good hands.

What Does a Social Media Manager Do?

Managing content is only a part of what a social media manager does, there’s

• Managing the budget
• Keeping an eye on the competition
• Developing, implementing and testing strategies to engage the audience and stay ahead of that competition
• Engaging with followers and responding to comments
• Monitoring and reporting on results
• Administering the creation of content, and
• Research
• Creating content
• Curating content
• Scheduling and posting content

Managing social media can be a full time job. I believe that in the near future most business owners will realise (if they haven’t already) that a social media manager is as integral to a business as any other team member they engage whether as an employee or contractor.

Mistake # 5:  Using Too Many Platforms

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, Pinterest, Snapchat….the list goes on. If you try and be across all platforms you will most likely fail. It’s far too time consuming. Pick one or two and do those well.

Base your selection on three things:

    1.  The platform where the majority of your audience are.

Are you B2B? Look at LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Are you B2C? Then LinkedIn may not be your best choice. Look at Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter.

What age group are you targeting? 

• Do your research. Facebook has 1.3 billion unique monthly users, mainly between the ages of 18-49 and is the best place to reach Millennials (18-29) who spend 7 hours a week on the platform and Gen X (30-mid 40s).
• Over 60% of online Baby Boomers 55+) use Facebook
• 90% of Instagram users are under 35. 38% are female and 26% male* (US stats)
• Twitter has 37% of users between 18 and 29 and 25% between 39-40.
• Pinterest has a largely female audience.
• Generation Z (the ‘teens’) are all over Snapchat and Instagram and prefer those platforms to Facebook.
• This link to an infographic from tracx.com provides an overview of some of the key demographics on the major platforms.

2.  The ideal platform for your product

 What is your product? Does it lend itself to images?

• Instagram is an image based platform as is Pinterest. So it makes sense to be on those platforms – if that’s where your audience is.
• LinkedIn is an excellent publishing platform for professionals who write lots of articles and blogs and conduct research.
• 2 Billion people are on Facebook!

3.  Choose the platform you love to use

It’s important to be comfortable with the platform you choose. If you don’t like taking photos, don’t use Instagram. If you love Facebook, then use it. You will be spending quite a bit of time on it. Australian statistics reveal that users are averaging almost 10 hours a week on Facebook.

Mistake # 6:  Posting / Too Much / Not Enough / Wrong Times

This is definitely one of the most widespread social media mistakes made by small businesses. Infrequent posting means you will drop out of your customer’s newsfeeds. No engagement. Out of sight out of mind.

Depending on who you listen to, ‘experts’ recommend posting at least once a day on Facebook, with the majority recommending twice a day at least and some even three times a day.

For other platforms, like Twitter a higher daily frequency of 15 ‘tweets’ is best. To simplify it here’s an infographic from Louise Myers from Visual Social Media with recommended posting frequencies for the major platforms.Save

Mistake # 7:  Not Posting at the Right Times

Yes it matters. This is one of the big social media mistakes made by small business mainly because they don’t realise that it matters. It does.

When are your audience engaging with your posts? What times are they ‘on’ social media? What days?

The easiest way to find out is to check your analytics and to keep a posting schedule. On some platforms analytics are only available on business pages.

• On Facebook, go to your ‘Analytics’ tab and click on ‘Posts’ on the left hand side. This reveals the data for When Your Fans are Online.
• LinkedIn only offers analytics for Company pages. Here’s a link to find out more: http://bit.ly/2svlPLu
• Instagram Insights: Here’s a post on how to access this: http://bit.ly/2p16R0S
• Pinterest: http://bit.ly/1uG1FcO
• Twitter: https://analytics.twitter.com/about

Keep a calendar of your posts. Include the post, the platform, the date and the time of day. Leave it for a day or two then check your analytics. What time of the day did it get the most engagement?

Schedule your posts for when your audience is most likely to see it. When they are ‘on’ social media – or just before so it’s ready for them in their newsfeeds.

Social Media Mistake # 8:   Not Responding to Comments, especially Negative Feedback

I see it all over Facebook business pages. Particularly those in retail. Customers post comments and the response? Crickets. Nada. Nothing. Not responding in a timely manner to customer feedback, whether positive or negative, is one of the most unforgiveable social media mistakes – particularly when it’s negative feedback – as it could escalate into a PR nightmare.

I see so many businesses that just broadcast on social media, a one-way conversation. They never interact with their followers. Comments go unanswered and questions ignored.

If you’re going to invest your time and resources using social media you have to be present and show up.

Social media is the perfect customer service tool

What other platform provides one-to-one communication (or one-to-many) as easily?

Not responding says what – you don’t care? You couldn’t be bothered?

Do you implement the Just Ignore It strategy in your business? Or just delete the message?

If a customer called or emailed your customer service department, or asked to speak to the business owner would you ignore them? Don’t do it on social media.

Consumers expect a timely response to questions and comments. 60 minutes is the minimum expected time frame. Of course, this is not always possible, but try to make it the norm for most days.

How to handle negative comments

Most people post negative comments for a valid reason.

• Put yourself in their shoes.
• Respond in a timely manner (preferably within 60 minutes)
• Offer an apology and a solution, and be sure to follow up.
• If necessary take the conversation off-line.
• If it’s just someone having an unfounded whinge, agree to disagree.
• Try this approach as recommended by social media guru Guy Kawasaki: Go three rounds: Ding Ding. Round 1: Commenter comments. Round 2: You respond. Round 3: Commenter responds to the response. End.

Mistake # 9:  Not Allowing Others to Post on your Facebook Page

Some businesses don’t let others post on their Facebook page unless it’s a comment under a post.

Many times I’ve wanted to post a picture taken at a great weekender or make a positive comment about something other than that mentioned in post, but haven’t been able to.

Allowing others to post on your page is a fantastic way to create user generated content.

How good does it look when someone is seen engaging freely on your page, and posts something fabulous about you or your product without your prompting?

Relax you have control over the post.

On Facebook simply edit your Visitor Posts settings to “Review posts by other people before they are published to the page.”

If you don’t like the post, simply delete it.

Social Media Mistake # 10:  Not having a Social Media Strategy

If your social media is stagnant or just not working for you? It’s most likely because you don’t have a social media strategy. One of the biggest social media mistakes is trying to ‘wing’ it. It’s the old adage:  “Fail to Plan and You Plan to Fail.”

A social media strategy is essential for success on social media.

• How are you going to achieve your short and long-term goals using social media?
• What are your marketing messages? Do they align with the needs of your target market?
• Should you use a content strategy, a video strategy, or images?
• What will it cost?
• Who’s going to do it?
• How will I know what’s working?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions (and any others) you need to get a social media strategy.

What is a social media strategy?

A social media strategy is a comprehensive plan that defines how your business will use social media to achieve its goals and objectives using social networks.

It helps you understand your customers, helps you communicate with them. It makes it easier to create content that resonates with them and so makes conversions easier to generate.

It defines the goals of where you want to be and the tools and ways to get you there.

If you want success on social media you need to get a strategy and you need to implement it.

Final Note:  Change your Expectations

It’s a reality that establishing a following and achieving results on social media will not happen overnight. Social media is about building relationships and cultivating trust.

It can take months and sometimes even years to drive conversions. It’s a long and windy road, but when done effectively and consistently, it will get results. Establish your value, connect with your audience and never give up.

It’s a long and windy road, but when done effectively and consistently, you will get results.

Establish your value, connect with your audience and never give up.

So there you have it, 10 common social media mistakes made by small business.

I hope this blog helps you to rectify some of the mistakes you may be making and helps you understand how social media works for a small business like yours.

Please feel to share this blog with friends and colleagues you feel will benefit from the information.

Particularly if they are small business owners like you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment below.