3min read

The 5 Biggest Mistakes to Make in your Social Media Strategy

by Article by Remington Begg Remington Begg | November 17, 2015 at 8:00 AM

A solid social media presence is something that everyone should be focused on having, whether you’re an established business or just beginning a start-up company. While being present on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and more is very important, exactly what you’re doing on them is equally as crucial. There’s many different ways to handle your social media accounts correctly, but here’s a few common mistakes to avoid at all cost:

#1 Not Having a Strategy

Get creative with your social media, but not before you set a clear strategy to follow. Posting blindly is not going to create the growth you’re hoping for; you need to have a plan. First, you need to understand who you’re marketing to, as different people require different strategies. The digital natives, or Millennials, require a lot more engaging and immediate responses. An older crowd of followers, however, will be more responsive to general information and traditional incentives.

#2 Little Interaction

In too many cases, businesses post updates but don’t participate in conversation. Lack of engagement with your followers decreases value of your social presence and you don’t build a quality relationship. When someone follows you, thank them. If they message or comment to you, respond back. It’s a very simple way to build a lot of trust.

#3 No Images

When is comes to social media, pictures say it best. They are shared more often than any other type of media and get the most engagement. Your followers are scrolling quickly and pictures cause users to stop for a moment and take something in. It could be a picture you took of your staff, a famous photograph that inspires you, or a generic photo with a great message written across it- just mix-up your postings so your followers don’t start to tune you out.

#4 Being Repetitive

Posting the exact same message over and over is a turn-off. Be original. If you’re promoting the same content on different social channels, change up the language and images so we’re seeing a different angle of it. Twitter forces you to do this by limiting you to 140 characters, while Facebook allows your post to be a lot longer. For LinkedIn, it should be in someway professionally relevant. Ideally, you should have different audiences and different angles for all of these platforms, so even the same post will use different language.

#5 Posting Too Much

People don’t want their news feeds to be dominated by your channel, so it is important to focus on quality over quantity. Different mediums require a different frequency of posting, so don’t treat them all the same. Posting 4 times a day on Facebook may be overkill, but it’s totally acceptable on Twitter. Social Media marketing is delicate. Your followers don’t want to feel like they are being spammed by your company.

With so many do’s and dont’s to social media, it’s easy to feel a little overwhelmed. Are you overwhelmed by all the social media options? If so, you’re not alone. But Impulse Creative can help you navigate through the process! Download our free eBook Mastering Social Media for Business today.