To grow your business and online presence, it’s essential to pay attention to these mistakes to avoid with your social media!
Social media is fantastic when it comes to using it for your business. But it can also be very challenging and frustrating when you’re not getting the results you should get. Because you’re putting all of this time and effort into, you know, posting, coming up with content, trying to get your name out there.
10 Mistakes to Avoid with Your Social Media
I’m going to dish out ten or so mistakes that I want you to be aware of to try not to make when you are doing your social media marketing for your business.
Not having a clear persona as to who your perfect human being is that you want to target, meaning avatar.
Avatars are used all the time. I like to call them human beings. So it would be best if you were clear as to who exactly you’re trying to target. For example, with makeup, you can say, “Well, I want to target every single woman.” That doesn’t work effectively. It’s not humanly possible to serve every single woman.
So maybe you want to serve a woman that is a mom, that is between the ages of 35 to 55, that perhaps is a realtor, so you want to get very specific on the type of human that you want to connect with, and you can have more than one of these customer personas, or you can have a few.
When your content is boring
Social media has to be social. If people want to be distracted, they want to be entertained, and they want to be inspired. They’re going on Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever the other platform may be. People want to be distracted, be entertained, connect with people, and have a human connection, which is so important right now in this new environment that we’re living in. Your content is essential, and when you have your customer persona aligned and have defined it very clearly, then you create content that that type of person would most likely engage with
Inconsistent with posting
You want to post at least once a day; you don’t need to go more than twice a day. I don’t really think that you do. But you also want to be consistent with your posting. Use consistent times because your audience will get used to that. There is no need to use a third-party scheduler for Facebook or even for Instagram because you can do it right inside Facebook creator.
If you’re not using Facebook creator yet, get in there. Because you can post on your Facebook page and schedule and Instagram and schedule, and it will automatically post, and you’re using the Facebook platform, which Facebook loves.
Thinking that if it works for somebody else, it’s going to work for you
An example would be the follow, unfollow tip that some Instagram influencers claim works. To me, that is just so not authentic.
You don’t need these huge Instagram numbers to have a big business. I don’t have thousands of followers. You don’t need thousands of followers to have a business and to get clients. Personally, my team and I have found ways to get clients without having these vanity numbers that honestly don’t mean a lot. One thing you can do with those numbers is to retarget them with ads effectively.
Understanding social media is free, but don’t take advantage of it
Although it’s free, you still have to make it work. You still have to put work into it. You can create an organic strategy, but it will take some time, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Now, there are tools that you can use within this free service of Facebook or Instagram. When you use the free service, and you add some paid services, they work. Not only do they work faster, but they also work more effectively.
Not playing with algorithms
You have to use specific strategies to make the free side work for you. It does take a little bit of cost to make the free tools work, so if you’re getting frustrated because you’re not getting the proper engagement or getting enough clicks to something, you definitely should look into the paid tools, like doing some ads.
One side note on ads: do not hit that boost button, get into the business manager and inside the ads manager, and do ads inside of there if you’re unsure how to reach out for help.
Not understanding paid traffic on social media and that it varies depending on the country
The same thing goes if you’re running ads. If you’re running ads in the United States, it’s different to run ads in the United Kingdom or Canada. There might be a pricing difference because the population is different, and there’s a lot of other factors that go into play.
Knowing the in’s and out’s of social media, just having that knowledge is important. So a mistake that I see a lot is people not having that knowledge and not paying attention to those things.
Not being ahead of the game
There are so many changes every single day with social media, so get educated. Facebook has a Facebook blueprint course online. They’ve got tons of training videos. You can get training videos through Instagram, through the creator app. There are so many tools out there to help you and to give you some knowledge. Sign up for different blogs, check out Social Media Examiner is a good one, HubSpot is another one.
Not staying in the loop
Have notifications sent to your email. Stay in the loop to know what’s happening with social media, what’s out there, what are new things are being developed. A mistake that I see a lot is that clients are not aware of what options are available for them regarding social media. It takes some research, some reading, looking things up.
You’re not measuring your data
Go into your analytics, find out what posts reach higher than others and which ones have higher engagement. When you look at those posts that have higher engagement, and higher reach, then that’s content that your audience is liking more.
Looking at other pages’ contents is also really important. Seeing which pieces of their content have higher engagement rates will give you an excellent idea of the type of content you should also be creating that aligns with that similar audience.
Not getting help
And a big one, “Get help,” taking on social media for your business, especially if you have a lot of pieces to it, and not just social media, but the digital online, website, lead magnets, going live, promoting your lives, running Facebook ads, doing messenger, doing something through Facebook Messenger, all of these things. It takes time. It’s a lot of pieces of the puzzle to put together, and it can get super overwhelming.
Get a coach, get a mentor. And if you love to do a 30-minute complimentary strategy session call with me, I would love to do that with you. I do them all the time.
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