5 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid

When planning or evaluating social media marketing, it’s important to have a clear, well thought out strategy. As most companies have now discovered, there are so many social media channels that it is nearly impossible to participate in or effectively manage all of them. A good strategy for most companies is to determine the two to three channels that can be most productive for your products or services and concentrate on engaging customers and prospects there.

As you plan your social strategy, here are five mistakes you want to avoid:

1. One-sided conversations – Social means dialog. It’s not a one way broadcast. Some companies are using social media as a channel for one-way marketing messages. It’s not effective. The goal is to authentically engage your audience using interesting content that helps them solve real problems. But you need to “listen to” more than you “talk to” your audience.
2. Using the same message in all channels – Each of the social channels has a personality that is unique to that platform. Some are good for B2B and some are more suited to B2C. You can alter the types of posts by channel with some being visual and others that include more text.
3. Depending on only one kind of content – There’s no doubt that we have become a more visual culture. On most social platforms, the posts with pictures or videos generate the most engagement. Remember that there are a variety of pictures you can post, including inspirational photos as well as audio, video, animations, and even live streaming.
4. Not optimizing your posts – Using the available meta tags for SEO and determining the optimal posting frequency on each of your social platforms can make the difference between building an audience and not. Also, whatever content you share, you want to ensure it is as “lightweight” as possible so that it downloads easily.
5. Not testing pay to play options – Expanding your reach through pay-for-click programs is usually worth a try. You’ll have to experiment with platform and offers, but you can quickly determine the ROI on these efforts and adjust as necessary to meet your internal benchmarks.

These are just a few of the basics when it comes to getting the most out of your social efforts. Another guiding principle to remember is that social conversation changes quickly in the virtual world. It is good practice to monitor and evaluate your efforts frequently, and deal with any negative comments or feedback quickly and resolutely. Your goals are to be 1) focused on your customer, 2) authentically engaged, and 3) quick to respond. 

Need help on a social marketing campaign? Your friends at Agile have terrific best practices to help inform your next campaign.