How to Suck at Social Media Marketing

Some of the most common social media marketing mistakes are the ones you may not even know you’re making.

The most frustrating part about these errors is that they often sound great on paper. At face value they’re a great type of marketing campaign strategies that put your brand above everything else but putting your brand above your customers and consumers might be eating into your bottom line and your reputation.

When don’t view your marketing strategy through this lens, it’s pretty easy to suck at the social media game, especially if you are recycling the same content and social media strategies as the rest of your competitors.

To help realign your focus, we have compiled a list of social media marketing mistakes that could be identified as key barriers in your route to success.

1. Stuck in the Plan

 It is quite clear that a majority of companies are basing their marketing “plans” off of generic social media guides or successive marketing campaigns from already flourishing businesses. While benchmarking is a good standard practice, failing to put much thought into it the power of social media is already indicating your company is making an amateur in social media marketing.

The prime mistake that even the largest companies can make is to fly through a rough draft of a social media plan and then sit back whilst it plays out for itself like an automated machine. Many of the failures in social marketing campaigns start from the initial starting of these planning processes, where marketers lack understanding about different platforms and thus do not consider the unique value and diversity that can be celebrated across social media platforms.

In order to implement an effective social media marketing campaign, marketers have to thoughtfully analyse the possibilities, priorities, and central business goals within each and every platform.

Each platform’s algorithms, users, and specific layouts for discourse differ, thus gaining a thorough knowledge of the business tools and sharing options within the platforms is one way to maximise your company’s social media potential.

2. Focusing on Quantity over Quality

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the priorities of social media algorithms, the quantity of content that you post is not the determining factor in an exposure. Creating a long-lasting buzz online is primarily reliant on the content you are providing to customers and consumers. Instead of the boring repetition of the same old posts, spice up your feed with some truly eye-popping, relevant, and countering content.

Users are exposed to millions of different posts a day, with many of those posts compiling of business ads and product-related content. Therefore, don’t go on a tangent of posting as many stories and posts as you can. Take a post-detox and minimise the unnecessary and repetitive content from your social media feeds.

The best advice for any business would be to limit the number of posts you make in a day to focus on the true quality of your posts.

There are a number of brands that are getting it right when it comes to their social media marketing, particularly when it comes to experimenting with their social media mix. A platform that has seen initial success with microbrands and smaller companies directed to an audience of Gen Z consumers is finally being leveraged by larger companies. While the following list of the 25 most engaging brands on Tiktok are great examples of how to not suck, by far one of the most interesting is the Irish airline Ryanair.

The company which has a longstanding reputation as one of the world’s worst airlines the brand has managed to celebrate its success on Tiktok thanks to a range of creative, entertaining, and trendy content that has seen the brand with over 1 million followers with the Ryanair hashtag receiving over 300 million views, with minimal expense.

Creating valuable content is by far the most crucial and efficient way of making your mark. Deciding your posting limits will help you create and choose only the most relevant posts that actually resonate with your audience.

3. Recycling and Reusing used Content

Re-using content across multi-platforms is a big NO, as all platforms need to be tailored differently in accordance with their unique designs, as each platform user has varying expectations and interests.

1) In order to create meaningful posts, clear your head.

2) Refocus your efforts on what platforms your customers are on.

3) Create more (quality content) with less (fewer words and worthless content).

4) Then, analyse the engagement levels of each post and let the results speak for themselves.

4. Not distinguishing your target audience

As of last year, there are approximately 3.96 billion social media users on our planet, with the active participation of 49% of the global population.

This number is unfathomable, and it highlights how it is simply impossible to effectively reach your target audience if you do not clearly define them. There are an unfathomable amount of users on social media, hence distinguishing your target audience will prevent you from throwing content into the void.

Take the correct steps to define your target audience methodically, which will refine your process to connect with consumers the “right” way. How many followers you have, or how fast you can attract likes/numbers to your account is not a sustainable goal without a strategic focus.

Defining and maximising the “right” following will help expand your brand loyal follower base. This step is vital to aid you in selling your products/services and converting followers into leads and lead magnets.

5. Purchasing a following

Another key mistake that can be easily forgotten is to never fall into the trap of buying followers! Do not do it. Ever. A recent experiment by Hootsuite’s marketing to purchase a number of fake followers found little success and highlighted the significant risks involved for your social media account.

Purchasing followers is unjustifiable if you are wanting to build an authentic and trustworthy brand. It is all a waiting game, so be patient and trust in the process. No company will suddenly wake up to millions of loyal followers. But, a company with a thoughtful and relevant content plan tailored towards their followers and individual platforms, will multiply their engagement numbers in a tick.

6. Not utilising the comment section

The most repeated mistake by businesses in my opinion would be staying silent in the comment section of each post. The comment section gives you a space to directly interact with your consumers and followers. Yet too many companies are focused on the hashtags they put forward rather than actually replying to valued customers’ comments and concerns.

In fact, Instagram and Facebook algorithms boost engagement rates and allow posts with active user engagement to be consistently featured on other feeds. This means that supporting comments, tags and shares within your comment section will attract more and more people to your account and posts.

Not only does staying connected allow you to develop a relationship with your followers, but simultaneously builds greater engagement rates for your account. This is why it’s important to not delete comments on your posts unless they violate the community guidelines. Thus, you should answer to all comments, not just the ones that are in the best wishes of your business.

7. Not promoting user-generated content (UGC)

Encouraging the use of UGC’s will only benefit your business and brand image, especially in our trending dynamic towards user-generated content.

Content that is shared and created by real consumers who are genuinely interacting with your business will heighten brand awareness and develop a more reputable brand personality among other consumers. UGC’s also attract followers that already have a connection to the producer of these posts, and hence appealing to an already similar group of people will easily create more hype for a brand.

Therefore, do not get into the habit of only promoting your posts create by your team, and start opening your eye to the new benefits of user-generated content.

It can be very easy to suck at social media marketing, so our advice to avoid it is to be thoughtful and earnest in your social media marketing. If you need expertise from a leading team of consultants, do not hesitate to contact our team today!