Social media marketing can be an effective way to grow your business, but it can also quickly blow up in your face if you’re not careful. There are many terrible ways to fail at social media marketing, but fortunately, there are many more great ways to succeed—if you know what they are. Here are five of the worst ways you can fail at social media marketing and advice on how to do it right instead.
Don’t Ignore the Basics
The internet has a way of making everything new. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t tried-and-true basics that apply, no matter what kind of marketing you do. Email newsletters and blogs may be old hat, but they’re still viable tools for reaching your audience—just make sure they have value, frequency and personalization.
Don’t Be Afraid to Change Up Your Game
With any social media strategy, you can’t stand still. The biggest danger is that you think your work is done once you publish a piece of content and send it out into the world. But just because people saw it once doesn’t mean they’ll see it again, so your job isn’t done after publishing—it’s just begun.
Don’t Run Before You Can Walk
If you want to be an expert in everything, then you should probably stick with your day job. It’s much better to focus on a few key areas rather than spreading yourself thin and failing in most of them. Pick two or three areas of marketing and become an expert. Then expand into more social media strategies once you have those down pat. Keep practicing, keep trying new things and—above all else—keep learning. And above all else? Don’t forget to have fun along the way!
Don’t Neglect User Experience
Look, social media can be a blast, but it’s also work. Without a positive user experience, it’s difficult to find and retain new customers, plus your company might lose followers in droves. Keep your users happy and they’ll keep you connected with them for a long time. Don’t Ignore the Competition: Who knows what the competition is up to? You do! The key is to see what competitors are doing that could help you achieve your own goals. Learn from their successes or try different strategies from theirs if their approaches don’t seem right for you. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Don’t Forget About ROI
The most common social media marketing mistake is forgetting about return on investment (ROI). The most important part of your campaign is demonstrating how you plan to measure success, and then actually showing that you achieved it. Just because a lot of people are following your brand doesn’t mean that you should be ignoring ROI; don’t be fooled by vanity metrics.
