Top Social Media Marketing Mistakes People Make and Regret Later

Before you even start reading, ensure that you aren’t making the classic social media marketing mistake of using a private profile or a personal account instead of switching to a business account.

Okay, cool. Now that that’s taken care of, let’s dive into some of the lesser-identified, yet vital mistakes that most brands make in their social media marketing strategies. Social media platforms are unforgiving and if you keep repeating the same mistakes, those days aren’t far when your posts will struggle to grab anyone’s attention.

Although a number of social media marketing services may tell you otherwise, you’re not the only one struggling to get their brands as many eyeballs as possible. In such scenarios, many are making some noteworthy mistakes to stand out in these networks. Are you making these mistakes too?

Let’s get started…

Top 6 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid

The top 6 social media mistakes that businesses should avoid to garner better eyeballs from their target audiences are:

1. Quantity over quality

A major and common mistake committed by most brands is posting 3 to 4 times on Facebook and Instagram as well as tweeting 8 to 10 times per day. In other words, that’s too much sharing for any business page. Posting too much is a pitfall that can lead users to unfollow your page or account. As stated by HubSpot, 68% of the users like brands to post once or twice a day. On the other hand, 19% said that they like brands to post three to five times a day. On top of that, fans get annoyed and bored seeing repeated content which makes them unfollow accounts quickly.

Next, try to be interesting!

The amount of information or entertainment offered by a post influences a user whether to unfollow an account or click on the bell icon to get notified of your next post. Hence, always keep your content engaging because that’s how users keep following you and share your posts with friends and colleagues.

2. To be on all social media platforms

It’s a good practice to test all social media platforms to understand how different platforms work and learn which one is suitable for your brand. However, many forget to stop using a certain platform even though it’s not providing good results. It needs to be understood that fewer the channels, the more you can focus, and the content quality becomes better.

The more platforms your brand is active on, the additional time and effort are needed to create engaging and tailored content.

Ensure to assess your social media profile, and identify which platforms are working for your brand and which aren’t. If you shift your efforts to the platforms that are working for your business, you will have more time to create quality content to target the users of those platforms.

3. Posting the same content across all platforms

Did you know that tailored content for particular platforms can increase reach and engagement?

If you have tested different platforms before planning your social media marketing strategy, you already know that same content doesn’t work for all platforms. Sharing tailored content for each social media channel is essential because users have different expectations for the posts they want to see on individual platforms.

4. Posting just to post

Social media posts are supposed to be engaging. So, if you don’t have to say anything then it’s better to not say anything. Moreover, if you’re not feeling inspired to share or post something, then don’t share. Period. Forced content does not pass the authentic or compelling vibe check. Besides, with a large amount of content being posted every day, social media users can easily detect hogwash posts nowadays. Hence, use stronger filters than ever.

On top of that, if you’re posting just for the heck of it then it can bring the opposite result of what you had wished for in the first place. So make sure to be intentional with every piece of content and follow a properly thought-out strategy to achieve your social media goals. It would be wise to have a social media marketing plan so that you don’t have to research a lot whenever making a post. Further, you may read our blog to better understand the crucial role of social media marketing for your business.

5. Absence of a social media marketing plan

You could follow the points mentioned above, but do you have a social media marketing plan? Yes, that’s the problem. Although it seems like a basic thing to have, yet several social media managers fail to do so. It’s significant to take social media marketing with seriousness like any other marketing if you want to work it out for your brand.

In that case, create a list of specific goals you want to achieve followed by a budget plan, and a plan of action as your strategy. It must have all the goals underlined, the ways to measure results, and different resources you may require.
Furthermore, you need to prepare with answers to the following questions:

• Why does your brand have to be on social media?
• Who is your target audience?
• What content are you going to share?
• Where are you going to share?
• When are you going to share?

To create a sound social media strategy, you need to remember the answers to these questions all the time.

6. Strictly sticking to your agenda

Do you use inspirational quotes on every social media post and like to position the content in structured identical-looking tiles? Have you been doing this consistently even though the engagement rate is low?

It’s a perfect example of marketers who don’t take advice from others or rather don’t test other strategies before coming to a conclusion. Rigidly sticking to a strategy is often the reason behind social media posts failing to make an impact on different platforms.

However, many people still do it because they want to stick to their plan. The first reason why it’s wrong is that you are crippling your creativity. Secondly, you’re not focusing on what matters – the audience.

So create plans and make decisions based on results. Always test new strategies and create engaging posts to prevent losing followers and the audience’s attention.

Conclusion

Are you feeling social media marketing is overwhelming? That’s fine. No one hits the ball out of the park on a single day. Although this feeling does fade away eventually, you can expect good results by following the best practices and avoiding the mistakes discussed above. However, try to tackle the social networks individually and not all platforms simultaneously. Also, focus on the content style that works for the platform. You’ll experience engagement and gain brand recognition in no time.