“A person, who never made a mistake, had never tried anything new.”
These words of Albert Einstein may contain gravitas, but, when it comes to social media marketing, mistakes can inflict permanent damage.
With around 2.46 billion individuals in social media, it has become an effective platform for advertisers to make their product or service more visible. Innovative marketing methods and trends are also emerging day by day which enable marketers to create more high quality contents which can connect with users more efficiently.
However, being oblivious to social media marketing methods and techniques can lead to decrease in followers and revenue.
Here are 5 mistakes that one should avoid for social media marketing:
- Determining the wrong target audience
Determining the target audience is a major aspect of social media marketing. Catering to the audience that best suits the product or service, customer demography can saturate the users. This can make targeting them easier and also save significant expenditure of a company.
To target the right audience, one needs to answer certain questions like:
- The gender of the audience.
- Their age group.
- Location of these audiences.
- Their average income.
- What organizations do they work for?
- What is their relationship status?
Answering all of the above questions can help a marketer find their target customer base.
- Choosing the wrong social media platform
After determining the right audience, marketers need to seek the right social media platform. For example, Facebook offers the most users, and thus, the demography is more diverse.
88% users fall under the age of 18 to 19 in Facebook, whereas, for Instagram, it is only 59%.
More demography varies from one social media platform to another; so, it becomes crucial for businesses to choose the right one for marketing.
- Not taking part in paid advertising
Paid advertising is one of the powerful weapons that social media bestows its marketers. Not using it to reach customers is a waste of resource. Organic results only reach about 10% of users in Facebook.
So, it becomes essential for B2C companies to use platforms: not only Facebook, but also Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for paid advertising. For B2B companies, LinkedIn presents the ideal platform for advertising.
I mean, you could purchase instagram likes… I guess that counts, but at the end of the day you really should make use of paid ads to make the most out of your brand.
- Not taking reviews into account
Those who use a company’s products and services will provide reviews and ratings to their social media handles. Ignoring negative criticisms can cause prospects to go to other competitors, thereby leading to brand death.
88% of users trust online reviews and as much as 90% of them read those. Moreover, 72% of users get influenced by positive reviews while around 90% say that they have bought a product based on a positive review.
So, yes, reviews are a big deal.
- Using substandard images
Pictures speak a thousand words.
Hence, it becomes essential for social media marketers to pick the right one. Selecting one that is of substandard quality or using a stock photo can only drive away prospects rather than bringing them closer.
Hence, these 5 social media marketing mistakes are the ones that businesses unquestionably need to avoid. Additionally, they also need to have a pre-determined goal and a plan for social media marketing.