Social media is an excellent platform for businesses of all stripes to engage their prospects and target audience. It enables brands to connect with their audience and establish rapport with them.
While this expedites communication between brands and customers, it also has another setback that cannot be ignored. Making an embarrassing mistake on social media is now easier than ever, and one wrong comment can turn into a PR disaster.
There are several other common social media mistakes to avoid. It is important to take note of these mistakes and find ways to avoid them.
Here are the common mistakes to avoid on social media.
Ignoring Comments
The level of engagement that social media posts drive is measured in terms of comments and likes. What is surprising is that certain businesses fail to acknowledge those who comment.
Not answering and acknowledging comments could make you look aloof and disinterested. So it is important for businesses to at least give a thumbs up to positive comments. It shows that you care for user comments and are listening and following the conversation.
You do not have to pay anything to post a reply to comments. And yet, these replies are invaluable and can help forge a strong bond between the brand and its customers.
Appealing to a Lifestyle Rather than Pushing Products
Brands should focus on promoting a particular kind of lifestyle that will appeal to their target audience. Products sold by the brand should align with this lifestyle. So if you can create interest in this lifestyle, you will be able to create interest in your products.
So look at conversations and topics for discussion beyond just selling. Try to kick off conversations on issues that will lead to greater interest in your brand.
Excessive Posting
Always prioritize quality over quantity. More posts do not necessarily mean more engagement. In fact, it could have the opposite effect. Excessively frequent posting can be annoying to followers. They may treat your posts as noise and dismiss them. So instead of just posting about anything, try to make it meaningful, even if it means posting less frequently.
Even one or two posts per day on Facebook and other social media platforms are enough. You should place greater focus on quality as compared to quantity.
Focus on Social Platforms that Matter for Your Brand
You do not have to post regularly on every social media platform out there. You should choose those that are most relevant for your brand and focus on them.
Adding even one social media platform means that you are greatly increasing your workload and burden. You have to create new content, answer your followers, engage them, like their comments, etc. Just creating great new content for a platform is a major task. So you should focus on just a few platforms that you think will bring in the best engagement and target them.
Posting Same Content on All Platforms
Sharing the same content across all your social media platforms is not helpful. Since each platform is different, you will have to customize and create unique content for each. People on different platforms expect different kinds of content, so you must take the target audience on a platform into account before posting anything.
Here is an example. Hashtags are helpful on Instagram, but they are not as helpful on Facebook.
Posting Only Landscape Videos and Images
There is a huge debate on landscape vs portrait. This depends largely on the kind of platform that you are targeting.
Square videos may be the optimal choice for Twitter and Facebook because they are not cropped. The same applies to square images. This is a major advantage to consider since cropping means that parts of videos and images will waste.
Square videos are especially helpful for mobile since they use more real estate on small phone screens instead of wasting them, especially when the phone is held in the normal vertical position.
Use Other Sources as Well
This may sound counter-intuitive. You might think that you should post only content from your brand to succeed. However, if you share content from other brands, you can surprisingly increase the engagement rate for your social media accounts.
Just think about it for a moment from your audience’s perspective. Only showing your brand all the time can get tiring for your followers. You can add wide variety and pique interest by showing content from other brands. Instead, you will win more trust this way as you show useful content from all over the web. People will recognize your social media handles as the source of great content from all over the web. They will soon understand that your feed is the source of the best posts, content and articles.
There are certain free tools that you can avail of to find great related content on social media. The “Pages to Watch feature” that you can see in your Facebook Page Insights is a free tool that you can use to find and share great content that your followers will like.
Not Availing User-Generated Content
You should think about curating and posting user-generated content, as it can help to greatly increase the engagement rate. You can share amazing content (for free!) from your audience to grow your social media accounts. So you should invite your followers and users to post their content and then curate it and feature it as your social media posts.
Bottom Line
You are now aware of certain common mistakes to avoid on social media. Steering clear of these mistakes can help you grow your followers, boost engagement and provide other benefits.
