4 Social-Media Mistakes Your Business Can't Afford to Make Effective social media is never easy but if you don't get these basics right, it's impossible.
By Jonathan Long •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Social media marketing is something you need to be doing. It's too effective when it comes to growing your business to ignore it. As more businesses make it a larger component of its marketing strategies, I see more mistakes being made.
Here are four mistakes you don't want to make on social media.
1. You're not interacting with followers.
Guess what the number one line of communication is for customer service? Social media.
The majority of consumers are constantly plugged into social media, which is the reason social media is a major customer support tool. I see a lot of businesses that understand this, but its social media feed is just a long list of support replies.
Since your followers are plugged in around the clock, use it as an opportunity to create raving fans of your business. Every business is going to have a different audience and target market, so you need to think of content that your followers would be likely to engage with.
For example, if your audience is millennials, memes might be a good play. Memes spark engagement, like comments and social shares, generating buzz about your business. Remember, your social media posts don't have to be traditional advertisements to convert followers into customers.
Related: 12 Things Authentic People Don't Do on Social Media
2. You're overly promotional.
Continuing where the previous point left off, don't post ad after ad, and expect your followers to stick around.
An offer here and there is fine, but if your followers feel that all of your posts are glorified advertisements, they will find other accounts to follow and leave you behind. They don't need you. You need them.
Related: 4 Strategies for Generating High-Quality Leads Through Social Media
3. You don't include calls-to-action (CTAs).
Collecting followers alone isn't going to magically translate into increased sales and revenue. Every social media profile gives you a place to put your website link, yet so many businesses miss out on an opportunity to collect leads, or push traffic directly to an offer because it simply puts its website's homepage URL in these sections.
Don't do that. Instead, put a link to your newsletter offer, downloadable whitepaper or a direct-to-purchase offer. Most clicks originating from social media and hitting your homepage are wasted clicks. Nobody has time to try to find offers. Send them directly to your offers, and this will greatly increase your conversion rates.
You should also mix in some CTAs in your posts. CTAs don't have to be promotional.
Let's assume you created a very informative infographic for your blog and want to drive traffic to it. Most businesses would just post the URL on social media and hope people will check it out. By including a strong CTA, such as, "You have to check out this cool infographic we just did -- especially point No. 3," will drive significantly more traffic than just listing the post title and a link.
Related: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing
4. You spread yourself too thin.
You have to accept the fact that you more than likely can't be active on all social media channels, unless you have a dedicated social media team or outsource your social media to a digital agency.
It will benefit you much more if you are great on three social media outlets, rather than mediocre on more. Pick the social networks that your business thrives on, and focus on making your impact even bigger.
With just a small handful of social networks to worry about, it makes answering messages and engaging with your followers much more manageable. The faster you can reply and the more you can engage, the stronger that connection will become. Social media is a great tool to build relationships that create life-long brand supporters.
