Just the other day I hit my head in the kitchen cabinet door. I left it open before that and forget to close it. That was quite a painful mistake, I might add. The same is true when it comes to social media mistakes. They can also end up being pretty painful.
In the long run, social media mistakes can cost us some serious problems; financial, and if this trend continues, it can cost us our social presence and relevance. Not to mention the stress that comes along with it, lack of money, losing clients, you name it.
But, we’ve all been there and there is a way out.
So, for the sake of not repeating the same social media mistakes over and over again, I will point out some of the most common ones to help you avoid them in the future.
Let’s get cracking.
1. You Are Not Doing Enough Research
If your research is not done properly, you are bound to make a huge social media mistake.
With so much content available on the Internet you can’t afford to write superficial content that brings no value to your readers. They will just leave. In fact, it is impossible to write good quality texts without knowing the subject, and you can’t really know the subject without thorough and in-depth research.
All that leads to the following fact, how can you know what interests your readers without researching their needs first? Research is crucial. I can’t stress it enough. Research on the subject you write as well as on your customers’ needs.
Just imagine how would you feel if, because of something you said that was based on little or no research, you end up being a laughing stock on the Internet? Not a good feeling, right? Even worse, once you hurt your reputation, the Internet doesn’t forget.
So, to avoid this social media mistake make sure your research is done well, your arguments are on point and backed up with relevant links.
Content written this way will easily reach your audience and make them take action whether it is buying your product/service or something else.
The next best thing you can do to interest your audience, even more, is to write emotionally engaging texts.
I use Populizr, a social media automation tool to help me with that. Populizr offers a feature called Sentiment and Emotions analyzer that checks the emotions your content triggers before it is published. As a result, you will know how your audience will react to your post before it is published. That means you can tweak your message so it contains those emotions you are looking for.
Awesome, right?
Just imagine the possibilities! You can make your audience happy, sad, angry, whatever it takes to make them notice you. And this is just a tip of the iceberg. Think about it.
2. You Are Posting The Same Message On Different Social Media Platforms
Is this familiar to you?
You are posting the same content over and over on each social media platform with the same social update/message. You should know that this is a big social media mistake. Why?
Because every social media platform attracts a different type of audience. Content is different, the way people communicate is different as well, etc. Bear in mind that people don’t want to read the same social update from your Facebook profile on your Twitter profile a well.
If your message is always the same your audience will soon find you boring and will consider your message as spam. And this will influence your reputation in a negative way. So, it is important to avoid that.
What do you think, wouldn’t it be great if from one blog post you could automatically create a unique social update with a unique title, image and meta description in less than 5 minutes?
Yes, this is possible.
Again, with Populizr.
Populizr can create up to 25 unique social updates from every single blog post. Also, this amazing social media automation tool allows you to choose a Promotional, Standart or Evergreen campaign to keep social traffic coming to your website for months up to a year.
This feature is not available anywhere else. Every other automation tool out there just offers to schedule and publish your social updates on selected social media networks. Which means all your social updates stay the same unless you change them manually. This is why Pupulizr is so handy, it does the job for you and helps you avoid this common social media mistake.
3. You Are Posting Content Only About Your Company
Commercial social accounts are acting like personal social accounts when they post content only about themselves. This is considered as a social media mistake because it sounds like boasting. Instead of just talking about yourself all the time focus on your users and see what their other interests are or create some yourself.
Take Coca-Cola for instance. They tend to post a different type of content on their Facebook page more often. With this step, they start communicating with their audience in a more personal way. Not only that, but they show that they are not self-consumed and that they care about what is going on in the world. This is a great way to share positive vibes and if you have that kind of influence it reaches a huge audience and can make a real difference.
Here’s the example:
Image Source: How Special Olympics Helped Storyteller Daniel Barich Find His Voice
This post from Coca-Cola’s Facebook page is about how Special Olympics has helped Barich, who has Autism to find his comfort zone and build his confidence for the first time in his life.
With content like this, Coca-Cola touches people’s hearts by showing humanity.
This is a great practice we should all use. It makes us human and our audience will recognize that and appreciate us because of it more. Connecting with our audience on this level will make wonders for your brand and help you avoid yet another social media mistake.
4. You Are Targeting Everyone
Who is it you are targeting? Random people, who happen to be on the Internet? No matter the age, gender or profession? Big social media mistake!
First thing you have to do when working on your social media marketing campaigns is to define your Target Audience. Targeting everyone will just waste your valuable time and resources. And you accomplish nothing because talking to everyone is like talking to no one in particular.
So, how can you define your Target Audience to avoid this social media mistake?
Start by determining the demographics of your current and potential customers.
Some of the factors worth considering when defining your Target Audience are age, location, gender, income level, educational level, profession, etc. You need to be specific when choosing your target market so it would fit your product/service the best possible way.
To make this easier for you, we implemented a targeting feature into our social media automation tool, Populizr. This is how you can adjust your timezone and pick your target audience so you wouldn’t repeat this social media mistake ever again.
5. You Are Ignoring Your Customers On Social
Fail to listen to your customers? A huge social media mistake.
Your customers always have something valuable to say and to teach you. And since your aim is their attention, listening to their discussions is a must. This is the only way to learn how they feel about and respond to your brand, as well as what their needs are. Which is a great insight for any brand so they can use it to improve their customer service and their brand at the same time.
Listening to your customers is a great opportunity to get closer to them which will, over time, increase their loyalty to your brand.
Let’s back this up with some statistics. According to Microsoft when it comes to customer service 96% of people say customer service plays a big role when it comes to showing loyalty to a brand. While 77% of customers would recommend a brand to a friend after a positive experience (Temkin Group).
Source: Impact Of Customer Experience
Same goes when it comes to negative comments. How you handle them and your attitude is what’s important in these situations. Not replying to negative comments is also one of those social media mistakes you should avoid.
When someone posts a negative comment about your brand on social, you should always first thank them for their feedback. Tell them you appreciate their opinion and that you always consider critical feedback to improve your brand. As we all know, if there is no criticism there is no progress.
In these situations avoid defending directly, because you will just provoke more negative comments. Of course, this will depend on the nature of the comments but pick your battles wisely.
You should also offer additional help or solution and go as many extra miles as you need to correct the issue. Even if the customer ends up unsatisfied or leaves, the way you handled the situation will be seen by others. And they will appreciate your attitude and willingness to resolve the conflict.
6. You Are Measuring Too Many Or Too Few Metrics Available
There is an ongoing debate on what metrics are the most important to measure social media success. We often fall in the trap of measuring just for the sake of measuring. For instance, when I first got familiar with Google Analytics, it was just pure fun to navigate all those metrics regarding social media and to collect as much data as I could, just because all that info was available…
But, in the long run, this is not sustainable. It is a waste of resources because it is not specific enough.
So, not to fall into this social media mistake, first, you need to define your goals and then choose those metrics that matter for that particular goal. This is the only way to get relevant data to help you improve your social media strategy as well as to avoid this social media mistake.
7. You Are Using Too Many Tools
This is the last social media mistake on our list often overlooked but, believe me, it is important to address it. You can get an actual headache if using too many tools! At the end of the day, it could happen that you end up managing all your tools and wasting your time on this or that new feature that is not that relevant for your business anyway.
To avoid this social media mistake in the future, choose your tools wisely. Make sure they have the right amount of features necessary for the job to get done.
When it comes to social media automation tools I just use Populizr. It has all the features needed to share my posts on the social networks I use and once I set campaigns I am free to do other work.
How Can Populizr Help You Avoid Social Media Mistakes
You have noticed that the social media mistakes we presented in the text are all interconnected. Which means solving one will help you in solving others as well.
And Populizr can help you avoid most of the mistakes mentioned in the post. Let’s see how:
- Create – to avoid posting the same message on different social media platforms Populizr can create up to 25 unique variations out of one single blog post. With all these variations you will never again post the same social updates on your social networks. With social media campaigns created this way, you can promote your business more efficiently and make sure not to spam your users.
- Target – helps you share your content with the right audience. With this feature, you can choose precisely who you want to target. You can choose Timezone, Demographics, Gender, and Age Range so your content gets the right kind of exposure.
- Emotions – we already mentioned in the text above how important emotions are. With emotions and sentiment analyzer you get to choose those emotions you want to underline to make sure your content triggers exactly those you are looking for.
- Insights – one of the social media mistakes we mentioned was about measuring metrics. With the Insight feature, you can measure the results of your social media content. Insights will help you understand where your social traffic is coming from (social network, country, city) and which segments of your targeted audience are engaging the most with your social media content. With this knowledge, you can focus more on the needs of your audience and maximize your results.
- Re-purpose – you get to reuse your best performing campaigns. You can check which campaigns got the most engagement in the past and then just reuse them. You can tweak them a bit, for example, chose a different scheduling mode and start a new date, and you are good to go. Get your already popular content in front of your audience once again.
As you can see, Populizr offers multiple solutions for most common social media mistakes. And all of that from one dashboard. Talking about saving time and resources…
Conclusion
I know that the mentioned social media mistakes are just the tip of the iceberg. We are all, unfortunately, making many more than these. I hope I helped you identify at least some of them.
Remember that some of these social media mistakes are connected and easily avoided with Populizr tool. So, killing a few flies with one hit is a great deal! Try it!
In the meantime, try to discover what other mistakes you are making so you can improve your social media strategy in the future.
So, does any other social media mistake comes to your mind? Feel free to share them with us. Also, don’t forget to share this blog post with your fellow marketers so they too know what to avoid on social media.
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