The 19 Most Common Social Media Mistakes

It’s easy to slip into bad habits, or forget some of the key principles in retaining interaction and positive engagement on social media. Here are the top mistakes made on social media by businesses, not in any particular order …

1. Don’t focus on number followers – focus on quality. If you only sell to Ireland then Irish customers are your target? Much better to have relevant followers. You want to have a direct line to your customers.

2. Neglecting to post good quality content regularly. Before you ask for anything on social media or your website you need to provide some value for your customers. The rule of thirds is still the dominant rule on SM.

3. Forgetting who you are. Don’t abandon your persona, your brand and start getting involved in arguments that have nothing to do with your brand. Unless you have decided to be an argumentative expert on a wide range of subjects, then carry on.

4. Not selling to your followers. The end of your follower’s journey through your social media channels should be a call to action, an opportunity to buy.

5. Doing everything yourself at the same time. Don’t neglect the automisation options out there. Posting on social media every day takes time, and posting fresh content takes longer, there are many softwares and services out there designed to make your life easier. Take advantage of them.

6. No interaction. it’s 2017 people do not like to be spoken at, they want to chat with you. Answering people, interacting with them, having good old fashioned conversations, works as well online as it does offline(in the real world) to build brand, drive sales and create relationship.

7. Having only a vague idea of who your target audience is. What are your buyer personas and where do they hang out?

8. Hiding, ignoring or deleting negative feedback. A customer complaint should be used as an opportunity to learn and grow, to show that you and your brand are able to take criticism, and mostly to keep the customer. People who silently sidle away are much more difficult to get back, people who give you negative feedback are giving you and your brand an opportunity to redeem yourselves. Take it.

9. Trying to be too cool for school. Don’t try and leap on the latest youth trend unless young people are one of your target markets. Young people can smell disingenuousness from us older people even online. Remember when you were that age!!

10. Blindly Spending money on Facebook ads, or Twitter cards without a coherent strategy. Boosting a post might sound great, but what is the point if it does not contain a call to action, or is not part of your brand conversation.

11. Not having sharing buttons on your website pages. Why write a blog if people cannot share it? Your content is there to be shared, make it easy for people.

12. Don’t over look LinkedIn Make sure you have LinkedIn relevant content. Use open discussions about aspects of your own industry, and or relevant and adjacent industries.

13. Ignoring Pinterest! What is Pinterest when it is at home? 80% of Pinterest users are women, it is the second best sales channel after Facebook, are you on it?

14. Google owns Google+ and Youtube, act accordingly. Google plus is a great way to drive traffic towards your site and content.

15. Customise your content for the social media channel you are using. Posting the same content through all your social media channels is not a great idea, it seems like you are taking it for granted. They are not all the same, Instagram is different to Twitter, when you are posting take this into consideration.

16. Constantly selling. This is boring and people will punish you by hiding your content from their timelines, and you will never know until you realise that nobody is liking or sharing that same post you have put up seven days in a row.

17. Not using video. Need we say more? Really? Get into video. Now.

18. Posting and running.  You need to keep an eye on your posts, has anybody interacted, asked a question, it is a delicate task, much like curating but you need to check in a couple of times a day.

19. Not using images. They really do say a thousand words. At least they can, when chosen carefully and presented correctly.