6 Social Media Mistakes To Avoid As A Small Business
Struggling to get noticed on social media? You're not alone. Many small businesses fall victim to common mistakes that sabotage their social media efforts. Here's how to avoid them and make social media work for you.
Gone are the days of social media being just funny cat videos and filtered Instagram pictures with your friends. Now, so many businesses utilise it to their advantage to generate brand awareness, reach new markets and connect with their target audience.
As a small business, social media is going to be the most cost-effective way for you to create awareness of your brand and products. Compared to traditional advertising methods that can drain your budget quickly, social media allows you to stretch your marketing pounds further and see measurable results without making holes in your wallet.
To save you time and effort, here’s 6 common mistakes small businesses make with their social media that you can easily avoid.
1. Focusing on Promotional Content
Being all sales and no soul will damage your reputation. Promoting your product should be the thing you do the least on social media. People are bombarded with advertising everywhere they go, with every other brand trying to convince them to purchase their product. To stand out, use social media to provide value to your followers, tell interesting stories and create engaging content that people want to interact with.
Brands such as FIX Dessert Chocolatier and Tails.com are just a couple of brands that are ahead of the game when it comes to social media and have used their online presence to connect with their customers by creating brand personalities that keep people coming back for more.
2. Incorrectly utilising social media channels
What does that mean? For starters, different social media channels are good for different content. Think about Instagram- it’s a highly visual platform where the right photo or a graphic will be the first thing that grabs attention. It is also a great place to use short-form video content to attract new followers.
Now think about LinkedIn- while it has significantly moved away from highly professional posts, the most popular type of content on LinkedIn is still professional and informative content that shows thought leadership.
Social media channels aren’t all one and the same. In fact, if you create a post and then post the same thing on all your social media accounts, you are very unlikely to get anything out of it.
3. Not having a brand personality
Without a brand personality, you will struggle to connect with your audience and stand out from your competitors. People are drawn to other people and brands they find relatable and interesting so don’t be afraid to show your personality and be authentic- whether that’s through you or a team if you have one.
3. Not responding to comments (at all or on time)
Not responding to your comments and messages is a very poor practise. Only a minority of people will leave comments under your posts so you really want to make sure you engage with those who do. Not only this, social media channels favour posts that have their comments responded to promptly and help to get those posts seen by more people.
4. Expecting growth with inconsistent posting
Doing social media right can be time consuming (take my word for it!) and, if you don’t have a good strategy, you will struggle not only knowing what to post but posting consistently.
This might mean that your social media feed either looks quite empty or your posts are so long apart from each other that it doesn’t keep your business on top of people’s minds!
Posting consistently means people see your name pop up often and remember your name.
5. Not tracking results
You’d be surprised how many small businesses do not track their social media results and insights (are you one of them?).
As obvious as this is, you cannot know what works if you don’t measure it. It’s easy to be biased and assume what people want to see, but it might be the complete opposite of what you thought! Use social media tracking tools to see what posts people are engaging with and what people are responding to the most- you might be surprised by what you find.
As a small business, your time and resources are precious. By avoiding these common mistakes, you will already be on your way to a better social media strategy, saving yourself time and effort.
If you’d rather focus on other aspects of your business and you’re looking for help with marketing, get in touch to see if working with me might be an option for you. Get in touch!
