In this day an age, it’s pretty common for a business to be capitalizing the benefits of being on social media (you can read about it here). But with new businesses springing up every year, from mom-and-pop stores to lightning growth start-ups, sometimes we could all use a refresher on what not to do.
Here are the top 5 mistakes new businesses need to avoid making on social media!
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1. You Don’t Socialize
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
If all you are doing is making posts and not bothering to engage with the people who comment, you are doing something wrong. Socializing and developing positive relations with the platform’s users is absolutely key. Those are the people you are going to end up advertising to in the future!
Too often a business gets caught up in counting the “likes” and “shares”, they end up forgetting about the human elements behind it. Make the time to cultivate positive relations – it’ll pay off in the future when you get willingly recommended by an audience that trusts in you and your business.
Engage with your audience. That’s the “social” part in social media.
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2. You Only Post Promotional Content
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash
If your business social media page only contains posts that only involve advertising your products or promoting your business, I’ve got some news for you. You doing yourself more harm than good. A healthy business would be diverse in it’s content – not just self-promotional pieces.
Create content that is useful and/or interesting for your audience. As long as the piece can stand on its own, it’s alright to link your readers to other more promotional focused pieces. Vary your post. Consider posting about what it’s like behind the scenes, or a day in the life of one of your employees.
Let you audience see that there are actual people behind the business. People buy from people.
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3. You Are Struggling To Juggle All Your Social Channels
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This is an understandable mistakes most new entrants to social media might make at the start. They see the opportunity to capitalize on ALL social channels – more platforms means more eyes, so that means more sales. This is almost never case, especially if you don’t understand how each social platform works.
Unless you have team to help you manage you social channels, in the beginning, just focus on using one channel effectively – there’s no need to rush onto all platforms.
Once you’ve gotten comfortable using one platform, you can jump onto the next. Since you’ve (hopefully) already built an audience on one channel, it’s much easier to tell them you are on another channel as well instead of starting from the bottom again.
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4. You Don’t Experiment
Don’t get me wrong, if a marketing post is going great, by all means keep at it. But at the same time, it’s important that you explore other ways to market yourself. If you’ve written posts as a means of advertising before, consider doing a short video next time.
In fact, keep an open mind on what possibilities you are willing to try to promote your business. After the short video, perhaps you could try hosting a small online competition or a lucky draw. The point is unless you are willing to experiment with new methods, you wont experience the effectiveness of other methods.
Break out of your comfort zone – a breath of fresh air is always appreciated every once in a while.
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5. You Quit Too Early
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If you are just getting started on social media, don’t fret if you aren’t getting the results you were expecting. Social media marketing is playing the long game. Maybe on the first campaign, you should focus on getting noticed and create an engaged audience (see first point).
Once you’ve built a decent level of consistent engagement, then you can begin to introduce your offer to your audience. By doing it this way, they have had time to build trust in you and see the value you can offer.
These are just 5 of the most common mistakes you can avoid making when it taking your business on to social media.
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Would you like to save yourself from the hassle of running and managing your social media campaign? We at Digital Zoopedia believe we can help you there. Drop as an email at [email protected] or if you’d like to find out more, click here.
