Being a business owner, one understands the importance of social media marketing companies and the role played by social media marketing to enhance your business top line. It helps you reach out to a relevant target group at a larger scale, get more clicks and traffic to your website, generate more revenue and become popular through word of mouth. Yes, social media marketing is extremely critical but it needs to be well planned and rightly directed – we often commit these common mistakes unknowingly; however, with the right social media marketing strategy we can do wonders for our business. A few mistakes one should avoid are:
Not have a social media marketing plan
If you approach any reputed Social Media Marketing company in India, like RepIndia, the first advise they give is to have a plan in place and then direct your Social Media Marketing efforts accordingly. It may seem obvious but most of us forget to define the objectives we want to achieve through our efforts. We end up following trends and randomly posting without thinking things through.
Don’t do this – come with a plan – what is your goal? What is your budget? What objective are you trying to achieve? This will help you determine the resources required and the plan of action to achieve the desired results.
Using every platform available
Social media offers many platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube etc. But do you really need to be present everywhere? The answer to that is no. For instance, if you have a logistics automation start-up targeting legacy courier and logistics company – using Instagram or Facebook for this B2B business would be futile. Your industry, business goals, target audience and other key factors determine the right platform for you. In the above example LinkedIn and Youtube would be ideal for you as that is where most of your target group lies. Don’t waste your efforts across platforms, concentrate them on a channel that will bring the most business.
Targeting everyone on the internet
If you are into wedding merchandise you ideally wouldn’t be targeting teenagers and if you are selling back to school stuff you wouldn’t be targeting people over 20. It is very important to define your target audience and spend your money and effort in that direction. Your social media marketing efforts will only give you desired results when it shows relatable and relevant content to your desired audience. You need to focus on various demographics, gender, age brackets, income brackets, buying preferences and other such important information to create a strong and impactful social media presence. Only if your brand resonates with your target group will any positive impact take place.
Inconsistency
You need to be consistent with your engagement – posts and interaction with your online users can not be a one off or random pattern. You need to beat your competition to captivate your target – so consistency is key. A good social media strategy will help you decide the timings of posts, manage schedules and use analytics to monitor the behaviour and reinvent and strengthen your social media plan accordingly.
Inability to engage in conversations
You may find yourself sharing multiple updates on various social media channels but are seeing no results. Chances are your content is not eliciting conversations which is why people aren’t sharing, liking or commenting on it –your effort is in vain.
Your content needs to be engaging, if someone has an opposing view or a negative feedback – talk to them, be polite and friendly. They need to feel heard and positive engagement will ensure that.
Self-promotion
You cannot blatantly promote yourself and your brand. This will bore people and eventually bring down your following and social media engagement. Share knowledge about your industry, do interviews with thought leaders, share best practices – people sharing your content speaks volumes about your business rather than you tooting your own horn. Try subtle self-promotion.
