As per a recent study, 7 out of 10 Americans are active on social media. And all of them fall under the young, high-income category and are using it to follow brands, check the content and chat up with friends.
With people spending so much time on social media these days, it doesn’t come as a surprise that businesses around the globe have come to depend on social media for growing their businesses.
Despite its significance in the overall marketing strategy, the fact is businesses are still failing at it. All. The. Time.
Why so? Here I walk you through seven reasons why businesses are failing at social media.
Table of Contents
1. Giving a Tinker’s Darn to Social Media KPIs
If you are doing social media just for the heck of it, without factoring in the KPIs, let me tell you that you are doing it all wrong. According to Social Media Examiner report, nearly 66% of marketers have benefitted from lead generation by spending almost 6 hours per week on social media.
For the starters, the social media KPI can be measured. And they include the following:
- Engagement
- Reach
- Leads
- Conversions
You could make good use of Google Analytics’ tool to measure the KPIs.
Use the tool to set up goals in your dashboard, which will help you track events that matter the most to your campaign. With hard numbers to fall back upon, you could use it to make strategic improvements.
Further, you need to figure out, of all the social media platforms, which platform could be leveraged to gain more traction and returns on your investment and accordingly, you could train your focus on that.
For example, If it’s Instagram that is helping your business gain more engagement, leads, and conversions, then it’s better that you invest more time and resources on Instagram than on any other platform.
So the point is, you need to have a specific goal in terms of your social media strategy. In case you are not sure about your ROI despite investing several hours and money into it, it’s time to relook into your social media strategies or hire an outside social media agency to manage your social media handles, so that you could focus on your core areas that could help you make money.
2.Turning a Blind Eye to Buyer Persona
It’s a general belief among businesses that they need to engage with every person who land on their social media pages. But, nothing could be further from this truth.
Because according to social media experts, engagement with only the right kind of audience matters. This means you need to first build a buyer persona in terms of your target audience, which in turn, will enable you to craft content that thoroughly resonates with them.
Besides the content creation process, you need to factor in SEO as well.
Make no mistake, your content needs to be user-focused; but then, it should, by all accounts, include the search aspect too.
This is why it’s crucial to build a keyword list and incorporate all essential words into your content.
3. Not strategizing as per Platform Requirements
Not all social networks are alike. Some are visually driven like Instagram, while some belief in a mix of both visuals and text – Facebook and Twitter.
The point is, that you need to figure out which platform suits your business the best. Put another way, before you start working on a specific social media platform, you need to have a strategy for that particular platform pat-down, which, in turn, will help you zero down the platform of your choice. Having a comprehensive strategy in place will help you milk the platform to the T.
Strategy can be in terms of your target audience, and the messages you want to deploy, which could save you a lot of time, energy, and frustration later on.
The problem is: Currently, businesses are not spending enough time strategizing their social media posts. They dive deep into a platform only to realize later that it’s not apt for them, resulting in a loss of time and resources.
For example, if you are a product development company or a service company, maintaining a Pinterest or Instagram account won’t account for much because your business is not visually driven. On the other hand, if you are into selling designer clothes or designer wares, an Instagram or Pinterest presence could make a world of difference.
4. Not having the required Bandwidth
If you are handling social media handles on your own, merely to keep up with the Joneses, then you are doing it wrong.
Running campaigns on social media is a time-consuming job. You need to marshal a whole lot of time, money, and creativity to conjure likable posts.
So, if you don’t have the bandwidth in terms of time and resources, then the chances of failure are quite high. So, rather than suffering on your own, it’s always better to hire a social media manager to handle your accounts.
It’s a common practice among businesses to partner with top social media companies to handle their social media campaigns. These companies will help you frame unique strategies for the platforms that you intend to work with, and in return, you will be able to come up with a unique brand voice that’s in keeping with your company vision.
5.Not Consistently Creative
Let me admit this! Creating exciting content consistently is inordinately daunting. At first, it may seem easy and all, however, in the long run, you may falter.
Creating compelling content requires mastery over a few disciplines, and more importantly, you need to remember: Useful content takes time to create.
So, ask yourself whether you have the time to:
- Create an editorial calendar
- Create posts that grab eyeballs all the time.
As you know, starting a conversation with your audience is never easy; much less driving them towards the conversion funnel. So, if you think that you are not good enough to write share-worthy content, it’s always better to consult content marketing agencies.
6. Automating Posts all the Time
Sure, automation is awesome. And it’s a common practice for businesses to use Buffer and they like to schedule their social media posts on a timely basis.
But then, as the name suggests, social media is about socializing. So, if you are automating it all the time, you are in a way, losing out on people engagement. And, as you know, it’s engagement that drives real traction to your business.
So, long story short: Look for opportunities to connect with your customers. If someone is reposting your Insta posts or if someone is retweeting your article, make sure that you thank them. Ask questions, answer questions, get involved in conversations.
7. Quality Content will Work like Magic
When you see social media accounts with a high follower-to-following ratio, and you think it’s their content that’s helping them draw traction, then you are wrong my friend.
Building an online audience is not easy. It’s hard work. You work hard, to shine hard. Viewers won’t just follow you. You have to follow a hundred thousand people, to get a handful to follow you back. More importantly, you may have to experiment with paid marketing, PR, and advertising, not to mention work your ass off to get referrals to complement your organic efforts.
Wrapping Up
There you go! 7 Social Media Mistakes that’s failing your business. If you go through them one by one, you’d realize they are not a big deal and you could implement without much ado.
So, share your thoughts on the same. What kind of social media KPIs are you following?
