Maybe you are sick of arguing with people about how effective social media is for business promotion.

Some people simply will not accept that in many cases a social media campaign simply doesn’t convert, doesn’t create traffic, and doesn’t have the desired effect.

After all, when was the last time you saw a stunning, amazing and clickable social media post about panel screws?

The first social media misstep you should consider is the fact that social media may not have the desired effect no matter what you post.

Here are twelve social media mistakes that may affect your business promotion.

People don’t understand that your profile is the official company profile

 

It sounds obvious, but your social media profiles should be smothered with your brand logo, tagline, colors, fonts and images. It is a little tacky, but this is marketing, not an egg and watercress sandwich.   

Solution – Brand up your social media accounts

Brand inconsistency is a troubling issue

 

Is brand inconsistency a bad thing? This article is going to say no. Obviously, you shouldn’t send mixed messages to your target audience, but if your audience is mixed, then surely some of your messages should be mixed. For example, if you run a toyshop, you may post videos of your toys in action with ultra-cool effects on Facebook for the kids, and post adverts for how your toys encourage fitness on Google+ for the adults. Is the brand being inconsistent in this example? Yes, but it is the toyshop’s job to pander to the audience.  

Solution – Be consistent, but try inconsistency as the situation warrants

Your competitors leave you in the dust with their posts and followers

They may have some really great ideas for posts. It sounds counterintuitive or unethical to copy your competitors, but if they are engaging with your target audience, then maybe you can too.

Solution – Copy your competitors, but make sure to bring in something newer

Rushing to create posts for your deadline

If you are committed to posting regularly, then put your posts on an automated schedule that publishes your posts at whatever time you require. But whenever you want to raise that frequency, you might need writing help to cope with research and writing loads to provide your followers with quality material. This helps remove the burden of deadlines.  

Solution – Scheduling and delegating can be big allies

You post very frequently and yet you still have fewer followers

There are thousands of people and online articles that give you recommended posting amounts. Some say that two Facebook posts per week are enough, and others say five posts per day. Some say you should post on Twitter at least three times per day, and some say once per day. You need to stop listening to other people. You need to work out your own frequency based on how long it takes you to create high quality posts.

Solution – Stop listening to other people about posting frequency

You spread your posts around like cheap margarine

The fact is that Google+ offers you the best opportunity to engage with your audience. There may be fewer users, but they are mostly adults and it attracts a more intelligent class of person. Post on Google+ first, and copy/paste elements of your posts onto other social media platforms. Make sure you engage with the Google+ audience by commenting, sharing, clicking and giving something back without taking.

Solution – Have a plan before you start

Getting people to comment is very tricky

Trying to create comment bait is so tacky, and most social media users are able to see through it as easily as they can see through those horrible viral images that demand you share them or something bad will happen (they used to call it chain mail). However, you should make comments. You will receive plenty of criticism from people that get their self-esteem from criticizing and belittling others, but grow a thick skin and get on with it.

Solution – Don’t encourage comments, but do make them  

Older posts seem to be forgotten

It does pay to go back and see how other users have interacted with your posts. It pays to go back and comment, and re-comment on your posts. It even pays to remind people about your posts and direct traffic to them. If you have spent a lot of time creating high quality posts, you should exploit them as much as you can.

Solution – Go back to your posts and promote them

You treat your social media and website campaigns the same

Other articles will tell you not to treat your social media campaign and your website campaign like two different things, and they are wrong because you should treat them like different things. However, it pays to run cross promotions and it pays to link your campaigns. Other articles tell you to treat your website and social media campaigns as if they were the same campaign, but they are not, each should have its own flavor and its own goals.

Solution – Link up your website campaign with your social media campaign

You cannot hold onto your followers over the long-term

It seems unfair telling people that they should post promotional and non-promotional content. For example, a photographer can easily make every post a promotional one and people will follow because they like the photos. However, as a rule, try not to over promote on social media because people do not like adverts. A ratio of four posts to one advert is fairly healthy.

Solution – Do not over promote

You seem to waste a lot of productive hours on social media

Social media is a time vampire that will drain your productive hours. People also spend time on social media and think they are making an impact when they are not. To stop you from wasting hours of productive time, you need a plan right from the start that includes measurable goals and steps towards achieving those goals. Simply gaining followers is not good (or specific) enough.

Solution – Use tools to help you automate your activities on social media

It costs lots of money to use social media measuring tools

Any measuring is better than no measuring. Just be careful that you do not succumb to paralysis by analysis. Social media will teach you that much of what happens is random. Google+ used to have a Ripples feature that showed you how your post was shared and re-shared, and it actually looked great, but it was removed in the end because it was useless. Besides looking good, it simply showed that some posts hit some profiles and get lots of shares when they get very few shares from others. You could post the same post again to another random group and get the same or a very different result. Measuring is good, but basic measuring and analysis is all that is needed because social media has a very random element to it.

Solution – Measure however you see fit  

 

Following these steps will enable you to develop the right approach to your social media campaign and avoid the most common missteps when promoting your business via social media channels.

About the Author

Sophia Anderson is a blogger and a content writer. She is passionate about covering topics on content creation, e-learning, social media, blogging and others. She believes that constant learning is her route to success. Her inspiration comes from reading like-minded blog posts and communication with smart people. Meet Sophia at @Sophia7Anderson.