Social Media Mistakes That Can Harm Your Brand

Using social media is an absolute must for every business. However, with so many platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram available, keeping up the pace with the most recent social media trends can be quite difficult, especially if you’re new in the business world. This can lead to many social media mistakes that have the power to hurt your brand significantly. In order to help you make sure this doesn’t happen to you, we came up with 7 most common social media mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.

Failing to set goals

How can you expect your social media efforts to be successful if you don’t know what you’re aiming at? Every fruitful social media campaign needs to have clearly-defined goals that I’ve been set way in advance. So, try to figure out what you want to achieve while on social media, and you’ll be able to measure your progress and adjust your approach along the way. If you’re not sure what kind of goals you could set, you can always go with basics, such as driving more people to your website, promoting your products/services, or building a large email list.

Ignoring the “social” part

One of the things that make social media a great place for promoting your brand is that you get to communicate with your followers directly. Still, your social media campaign isn’t going to be effective if you ignore that “social” part and only bombard your followers with ads for your products/services. Instead, what you need to do is ensure that most of your posts give you a chance to bond with your customers and build powerful relationships with them. Therefore, just try to show some personality, and your page will get all the likes and shares you need.

Sharing useless content

Another common social media mistake is sharing the content your followers simply have no use of. Most social media users who access your page are there for a reason. They want quality content they can engage in and learn from. If they stumble upon your post only to find out that it’s absolutely useless, they’ll label you as a “spammer”, and chances are they’ll turn to your competitors instead of you. That said, you need to make sure everything you share on social media is something your followers will be able to benefit from.

Oversharing

We’ve mentioned above that sharing useless content isn’t going to do you any good. However, even if you have quality content, it still doesn’t mean you’ll be guaranteed to do well. This is the case because oversharing your content (no matter how relevant you find it to be) is another way to make your followers think of you as a “spammer.” Studies have shown that social media users are quite likely to unfollow a brand that posts more than 6 times a day. In order to avoid being unfollowed, you might want to limit yourself to 2-3 posts a day.

Not monitoring your efforts

With so many platforms to promote your business on, keeping an eye on everything that’s going on can be tough. Still, you can’t promote your brand successfully unless you monitor your social media efforts. For that, you need to have a good media intelligence strategy.  If you don’t have an in-house social media marketing team, it’s recommended that you hire the professionals to do this for you. Experts in social media monitoring can help you figure out the platforms you should focus on, which is always a huge plus. They can also refer you to the right influencers for your niche, and provide you with the news in the world of social media marketing.

Posting without thinking

While social media is a great place for brand promotion, it’s also where you can get a lot of negative comments. In order to avoid this, you need to make sure you think every time before you post something on your social media pages. Fail to do this, and you might find yourself posting something that will lose you the respect of your customers and followers. And there’s no need to say that this is how businesses end up getting shut down. Reread each of your posts and remove anything that might insult some of your social media followers.

Arguing with your customers

Even if you offer top-notch products/services, some of your customers won’t be satisfied and they might choose to express their feelings on social media. Even though it might feel natural to defend your business, you might want to think twice before arguing with your customers publicly. Another mistake you can make is just ignoring this type of comment. For this reason, it’s a good idea to respond to every negative comment you get, but try to be as polite as possible. Sometimes, offering a refund is a much better option than arguing on social media.

Avoid making these 7 social media mistakes and you’ll be guaranteed to see your efforts pay off. Just don’t forget that the world of social media is constantly changing, so following the most recent trends is a must.

Author Bio

Claudia Paisley Propp graduated journalist, digital marketing lover, based in Sydney. Copywriting, Online Marketing… Let’s just say – Communication in all shapes and sizes is her passion and what she does best. She is that lucky girl who gets to live her dream. Here to share her knowledge and write about the latest trends in (social) media that can help small businesses grow really big. Writes for Bizzmark blog