Social media is a key marketing platform for all types of businesses.
With more than 1.15 billion active users, Facebook is considerably the most-used and most-visited social media service across the world, even though Google+, Twitter, and other social media platforms are just as important to ignore.
For a business to promote content sharing and extend its reach to a wider audience, social media marketers have to commit their time and effort, at a reasonable extent, to promoting businesses across social media sites.
Social media marketing calls for consistency and patience, but some novice marketers unfortunately make a few common slip-ups.
Here are five common social media marketing mistakes that newcomers, and even some expert Internet marketers, make:
1. Marketing without Strategy
Never embark on any type of marketing campaign or activity without strategy. Social media marketing often takes time to show results, but it is normal. Even though it may take time to achieve success, it will only be possible if you are committed and consistent with your efforts. You have to take advantage of social media platforms to spread awareness of your newly published content to the target audience. You have to urge them to share through social media buttons, such as Facebook Likes and Google +1’s, from your website.
2. Passive Use of Social Media
Social media is about interaction and engagement with fans and followers. Twitter accounts and Facebook pages initially were not built for promotion and marketing that is similar to conventional advertising media. Social media reaches out to the audience, informs, and generates conversations. Conversations have to answer questions and address concerns so that the business creates good reputation cements its name and brand within the community it wants to build up.
3. Publishing Wrong Content
You have to make sure the content published on your social media channels are the type of content most likely to spark interest and engage with the target audience. In addition, divide your audience to deliver custom content to each division. Separate the campaign effort for each social media platform. Do not just post similar content on your social media sites. Each social media platform has a different type of audience so remember this before marketing or publishing content.
4. Inconsistent Brand Image
Make people easily recognize the brand image of your business. You have to be consistent across the marketing platforms and social media services the business use. The content may be somewhat different from one social media platform to another, but you have to use coherent styles, themes, and profile images. Use one logo across all social media profiles you use to help people easily recognize your brand.
5. Bad Timing
Timing is vital to the success of social media marketing. Good timing is determined by several factors, such as the target demographic and the social networking site. In general, the ideal time to post on Twitter or Facebook is around noon, with most working people taking breaks for lunch and updating their social media accounts. In the case of LinkedIn, the ideal times to post are before work starts in the morning and from 5 PM to 6 PM in the evening.
