Just a month to go and we’ll be halfway through the year.
If we talk about social media and online marketing, the past months were a blast. There were a lot of improvements and new features that really helped push forward businesses towards their goal.
But we all know that no business have done it perfectly. There would always be some setbacks, even questioning ourselves why isn’t it working?
There could be many answers to that question. For one, not one formula would fit every business. Every online marketing strategy would differ for each company.
But if you’re confident about your current practices, you might want to check a few things on what could you be doing wrong. Here are some points you can look into on what could possibly go wrong with your social media and online marketing efforts.
Incomplete Social Media Profile
Go over all your social media accounts and check if you have completed all your profile details. Why? Because it’s important for you to establish yourself well in just one page. Make sure that it contains every information about your company in just one page (your profile page).
This is very important especially with your contact details. Sure, not every company have all the contact channels but at least let your customers know how best to reach you.
Not Knowing Your Audience
Surprisingly, not all companies know their audience. This is why your social media marketing would never work!
Check on where your target reach is set. Is it too broad? Are you targeting ages 18-60 years old because you’re not really sure who would buy your products, right?
If you’re spending for your social media ads, not knowing which specific audience to target could cost you more than what you could get in return.
Post Frequency
Some posts too much; others too scarce.
There’s really no hard-and-fast rules on how frequent you should post on your social media. Once or twice a day would do but never force yourself to posting something that is not important, relevant, and enticing.
Not posting as often as you should could give an impression that you are not active, your are not engaging, and that you’re not existent at all. But posting too much and too often could also annoy your audience.
Learn how to observe when would be the best time to post something and make sure that your post is valuable every single time.
No Image Branding
Consistency of style is also important. Even as little as a color scheme on your imagery can make a difference in your social media marketing.
Imagine your Instagram posts. How do you compose your photos? Imagine your tweets, what’s your usual voice? Words and phrases; angles and lighting – these might all seem so little of a detail for a marketing strategy but this is important.
Having a consistent style – whether on your writing style or photography – creates a branding. Create it in such a way that even if your audience won’t look at who’s posting it, they would know right away that it’s you.
Sticking to One (or The Most Common)
Another common mistake by companies is sticking to just one social media platform – or to limit themselves to the most common one.
Every observed how some companies are so active on Instagram but barely posts anything on Twitter? Or on Facebook but is too quiet in IG? That’s because they limit themselves only to where they think their audience is most active. Don’t follow this.
Like your audience, you should be multi-platform, too. Social media platforms are not interconnected or integrated with each other so you really don’t have any excuse.
Don’t create content for just one platform. Customize them according to a platform’s capabilities. They may have the same content or message but make sure it suits the platform.
Take Twitter, for example. It has limited characters compared to Facebook or Instagram. That means you cannot just post what you have posted on FB or IG especially when your captions are long.
Another mistake is to limit your social media presence on the most common or most popular channels only. Consider other platforms, too. There’s Pinterest. There’s Quora. And there are many other that you can participate on. You’ll never know that your audience – or untapped target – is lurking there.
After all, social media is mostly free so you’ll never really lose anything as long as you try.
Ignoring Comments and Complaints
Rants. People do it most of the time especially on social media. Other companies think it’s best to ignore them because, maybe, they think people are just trolling them around. You may have to do this sometimes (and on special cases) but certainly, you do not ignore your customers; most certainly not their complaints.
The best way to deal with complaints is to address them. People may be commenting randomly on your post, even complain about a product or service irrelevant to it, but it’s not an excuse to ignore it. Engage in a conversation and open to them to let them know you are listening.
Ignoring any comments, especially complaints, on social media is closing in the conversation and actually letting them win. Engaging in an open and friendly conversation would give you a room to be heard not only by that one customer, but the others who are following you or reading on the post as well.
Now you know what you could have been doing wrong. It’s time to do a check on your social media accounts and online marketing strategy to see if there are some things you could adjust and finally make right.
