Running the social media for your business can be confusing at the best of times. There are trends to keep on top of, hashtags, engaging with your followers, scheduling content and so much more depending on which platform(s) you’re on.
Here are 3 mistakes you might be making on social media for your business (and how to avoid making them again):
1. Thinking Your Need To Be On EVERY Platform:
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitch, Reddit. Then there’s your own blog and monthly newsletter! Running Social Media for your Business isn’t a bingo card where you need to stamp every number before you can yell “BINGO!” (am I showing my age with that analogy?)
Stretching your resources so that you can produce content for every social media platform, or even worse, copying the same content to every platform and assuming that will work, is a huge waste of your time and energy.
If you’re just starting your Social Media presence for your business you might think that having as much exposure as possible is going to be the best strategy but to that we say: Do Your Research.
Take the time to study your competitors, see what platforms they are using and where they get the most engagement. We stress the word “engagement” because vanity metrics (which we’ll get to later) such as follower numbers or page likes don’t really mean anything for a business’ bottom line. You want to use platforms where people are commenting on and sharing your content, making sure you are able to track how that corresponds to you making sales or generating leads.
2. Spamming Your Follower’s Feed with Sales Content:
This may shock you to hear but people generally aren’t using social media so they can make decisions about purchases. It’s definitely important for there to be some sales content on your social media channels but if the only things you’re posting are product shots with prices listed then you’re in for a bad time.
Don’t think of your Social Media accounts as a sales catalogue or a virtual store front. Think of your Facebook or Instagram page as being at the top of your sales funnel. Your Social Media presence should be driving potential customers to your website where they can easily find all the information they want about your products and services.
You should have a mix of content on your social media:
– Post about what you do rather then about what you sell.
– Show off your staff and their successes.
– Highlight your local area and other businesses (There’s never been a more important time to #supportlocal)
– Curate content from other pages that resonate with your brand identity (remember to tag them)
This not only helps you avoid being overly spammy to your followers but it also gives them a wider variety of content to engage with.
3. Avoid Focusing on Vanity Metrics
As we mentioned before these are a big no no to focus on, but what exactly are vanity metrics?
Put simply these are metrics that, while they might look good on paper, aren’t really doing anything for your business and it’s bottom line.
Anyone can go and buy followers for Instagram and just because you have 50k people looking at your content it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to purchase your products. The same goes for post likes. Double tapping your screen or hitting a like button can be an almost passive action at this point.
That’s why we’ve stressed that you need to be aiming for high engagement in this article. Engagement shows that people are really looking at your content, they have an opinion on it that they want to express. The same goes for sharing or reposting your content.
Always make sure that you can link activity on your socials to activity on your website by installing a pixel and creating events (not sure what that means? You can always send us a message 😉)
