1. Putting too much emphasis on selling
Social media should be about building engagement with your potential customers and putting out quality content which makes them want to revisit and builds their trust and interest in your brand. Sure, it’s important as a business that everything you do has the ultimate aim of selling your product or service and gaining you profit, but savvy customers can smell a sales pitch a mile off and will be just as interested in buying your service as they would buying from a door to door salesman. People don’t log onto social media to be sold things, they are there to be entertained. Give them what they want.
One or two posts which directly sell your products are fine, but the bulk of your content should be interesting to your audience and relevant to your sector. Through encouraging shares and engagement, your sales will grow naturally and people who already ‘like’ you will be much more receptive to being asked to spend their money.
2. Not posting often enough
Having a sporadic social media presence is almost worse than not having one at all. A Facebook page without updates could signal to potential customers that you’re at best stuck in the past or unresponsive, and at worse that you’ve gone out of business! It should be your aim to post regular, quality content on a schedule that you can keep up with. It doesn’t matter so much if that’s once per week, once per day, or three times per day – as long as you are consistent.
There are many tools online where you can create and schedule posts to minimize the amount of time you have to spend on it day to day, and you can even be posting while you sleep. If the thought of sitting down once per month and generating a wad of content to post to your business’s social media still seems like too much effort, consider hiring someone to come onto your team as a social media manager, or see the suggestions for creating quality writing in the next point…
3. Publishing poor quality content
It doesn’t matter how often you post if the content is awful. It’s normal for a business owner’s strengths to lie in just that – business – rather than amazing content creation. If that sounds like you, there are professionals a click away who can edit, proofread or even create great content for your business social media accounts.
Check out Upwork.com and Freelancer.com for large listings of freelancers who can help you for reasonable prices. Another advantage of having a range of writers working with you is that you’ll be able to get original content and fresh ideas, to maintain your audience’s attention. You can find niche writers at any assignment writing service.
4. Not responding or interacting to comments
Point 1 of this list told you that your presence on social media was to create engagement – it’s a two way street. When customers interact on social media, whether it’s a comment or a criticism, it’s important that you or whoever is managing your social media replies in a timely and polite manner.
Have a ‘voice’ which is distinctive to your brand, and remember the customer is always right. Your exchange with one individual will be there on the internet for all to see.
5. Putting out poorly planned and presented content
Being successful at social media doesn’t have to be a guessing game. Do your research into trends, popular topics and SEO. Tools like Hemingway and Academized will improve your content quality and Coschedule’s Headline Analyser will report the quality of your headline. Keep track of your word counts with EasyWordCount.com.
These sites will improve the overall quality of your content and enable it to rank more highly so that more people see it, and your products and services are viewed by a greater number of people.
6. Not being consistent across all your social media platforms
Social media is probably the most visible face of your company and as such it’s crucial that there is continuity of branding. The look and feel of your social media pages, as well as the content, should flow across all the platforms your present on.
Also, pick the right platforms for your business. Are your customers going to be found on LinkedIn or on Snapchat?
7. Not measuring your performance
Social media is a powerful tool for business, but only when it’s used properly. All the major platforms offer powerful analytic reports about your strategies and how well they are performing. Check these regularly to make sure that your social media accounts are performing and implement changes to improve and generate results which will work better for your goals.
By working to address these common problems that businesses face on social media, you can be one step further towards harnessing this powerful tool to further your business success.
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