Comm&Sense

Gone are the heydays of traditional marketing. Advertisers are starting to ditch radio. Print is having a hard time to keep up. And television commercials? They can easily be another expensive failed effort off the shelf.

 

The marketing world is speaking through another universal language ‚ social media. And if your business is keen on being on the right track, you’ve probably realized the importance of social media marketing in establishing your success online by now. Like many businesses out there, you have invested valuable resources in developing their social media marketing plan. However for some, the outcomes may not be what they were aiming for.

 

If you find yourself stuck in your social media marketing strategy, review these reasons and identify where you are doing it wrong:

 

You’re ignoring your audience

 

The whole point of talking to social media is to reach out to your customers easily. The keyword here is ‘social’ so be social. When they follow your brand, expect that they will render comments, ask questions or share content‚ however negative these may be. It is the marketer’s job to pay attention. If you don’t respond to any of these, chances are your followers will get the impression that you don’t care about them. Worse, to your customers. The logical thing to do here is to simply take the time to respond. Engaging them is the correct path to executing the social media strategy. Without engagement, your customers will be dissatisfied with the company.

 

You’re talking to the wrong audience

 

Wondering why your posts are not getting hits? It’s probably because you’re talking to an audience that doesn’t relate to what you’re saying.

 

Establish that your brand has a particular niche: determine who are your primary, secondary and tertiary market. For your content to reach maximum social velocity, you have to address these markets directly because in the end, these are the people who you can expect to increase your revenue. Don’t attempt to target everyone at once, and don’t even try to treat social media as a game of point and miss.

 

Take advantage of Facebook ads and dark posts. Using those, you can customize the audience to be targeted with your posts. Of course they are not without fault but you can rest assured that you will generate engagement if you just leave your content out there.

 

You’re always making it about your brand

 

Let’s put it this way: you don’t want to oversell yourself to a girl you’re courting. You’ve got her impressed, and she might even like you already, but this can quickly make you sidetracked if you don’t stop talking about you, you, you. She wants to know what’s in it for her. She wants to be reminded of what you can offer in this budding relationship. The same things flow for your brand’s relationship with the audience. They like you and try to keep the momentum going by using creative ways to hold their attention. Don’t be too heavy on bragging about how great your brand is, unless you want to turn them off.

 

You are not familiar with the psychology of your social network

 

Social media networks isn’t just Facebook‚ there are Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. Each is unique on its own with an equally unique market that frequents them. Facebook thrive on long-form clickbait content whereas Twitter draws attention using catchy headlines under the 140-charater mark. Pinterest and Instagram users are more visual so beautifully done photos are imperative.

 

Learn how to talk and appeal to a specific market. Work around their limitations and use these to your advantage. Never ever make the mortal sin of sharing content that is ‘one-size-fits-all’.

 

Your voice is inconsistent

 

The voice of your social media strategy carries across your brand’s personality. This is manifested in the copies you use for your social media pages and they need to be consistent with what you started with. Tweaking your approaches to tweets, Facebook, etc., your voice should have a recall on your followers.

 

You are not creating and sharing content

 

Content creation and sharing fuels your online presence. Without them, you are just another brand waiting for the guava to fall from the tree. Imparting relevant and informative content on your field of expertise will help you build credibility and authority. The content need not be yours 100% of the time. It’s best if you consider sharing informative content from various sources.

 

You are sloppy

 

Your brand is being reflected at a massive scale through social media and why not show off the best that you’ve got. Typos, grammatical errors, and punctuation mistakes are sins that you should always avoid in your social media posts; always keep in mind the quality of your post. Being careless means you are careless about the number of followers you have, and of course, careless about the brand’s leads. Proofread your social media posts using an available editing service, or have a specialist to man your social media presence. Do whatever you need to do to ensure seamless posts and interaction.

 

You are not measuring

 

Collecting and analyzing consumer data have never been easier than this age. Many softwares are readily available for marketers to track down their performance among consumers and their behavior toward them. But despite all this, many still make the mistake of not measuring. The primary consequence of not measuring social media-related metrics is, well, you’ll never know if your social media strategy is effective, which defeats the purpose of you going online so measure traffic to your website or social media pages.

 

Determine your posts shareability. Know how much engagement you are generating. Importantly, do all your social media efforts contribute to ROI? All these can be identified when you measure your data. This way, you will know if you are achieving your goals. If you aren’t, you will know exactly which areas you have to improve on.

 

Implementing a successful social media strategy can be tricky when it comes to promoting a brand, no matter how accessible and easy to use it is. But really, the greatest hack into mastering it is focusing on what matters — the consumers. Respond and engage your followers and help them in any way you can. If you need to incorporate other tactics and tools to your existing social media strategy, do it.