Top 4 Biggest Social Media Marketing Mistakes You're Making

1. Lack of audience research on your social media channels

How are you creating your social media content? Are you using assumptions of what you think your social media audience wants?

In all honesty, this approach is problematic. You need to conduct some extensive research of how your competitors are utilising their social media channels. You need to know your audience (your target market) inside and out! Research away.

You should be able to answer the following questions to make your social media content marketing effective:

• What are your audience’s interests?
• What are their challenges and concerns?
• Where are they located?
• How much time do they spend on social media platforms?

If you can answer these questions, you can start developing an audience profile that can be used in your social media marketing for your business. Check out social media analytics such as Facebook insights and Twitter Analytics, which are freely made available to you via the native platforms.

2. Making use of the wrong social media platforms

It is vital to identify which social media channels your target audience is most active on. Are they constantly using LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook? This is important knowledge.

If you haven’t conducted audience research, you won’t know what social media platforms your customers are using. You must be where your audience is and engage them there. By distributing content to all social media channels, you’re spreading yourself thin and are wasting time, which affects your bottom line. Rather concentrate your social media marketing efforts on specific social media channels.

3. Don’t rely too heavily on social media marketing automation

Having the ability to pre-schedule all your social media posts for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn may save you time, but too much social media marketing automation can make your social media profiles appear robotic.

You’re no longer interacting and engaging your audience, and building relationships with prospective customers. Of course, it is recommended to schedule posts for certain times when your audience is most active on social media channels. But don’t forget the human element!

4. More visual-based social media content

Sharing videos and images on your social media profiles (visual marketing) is a necessity for any type of social media marketing. According to Digiday’s State of the Industry Visual Marketing: Scale to Win:

“There’s very little argument: Visual marketing is clearly deemed superior to text-based marketing. An overwhelming 72 percent of respondents said it’s more effective; 41 percent went even further, saying it was much more effective than the text-based alternative.”

Try out different types of visual content be it videos, images and animates GIFs to see what resonates with your audience. Social media marketing at the end of the day is all about experimenting. However, at the same time, remember to measure the results of different types of visual content, compare and contrast then adjust your strategy going forward.

When creating social media content, making use of the latest marketing technology and social media platforms, we suggest keeping these mistakes in mind. Soon you will be content marketing will be on point and with the advice we’ve provided your social media marketing will evolve. Social media success is only a click away!