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Social media marketing is a powerful marketing medium that no organization can afford to overlook. Over 4.5 billion people are now active on various social platforms.
However, many marketers end up committing common mistakes that hurt their social media ROI and growth.
In this guide, I’ll share the top 10 Social media marketing blunders you should avoid, with tips to succeed:
1: Not Having a Clear Social Media Marketing Strategy
The first main mistake is not having clear marketing objectives and a documented social media strategy tied to business goals.
Before creating social content or spending money on ads – lay out core focus areas like:
- Who is your target buyer persona?
- What are the key performance indicators (KPIs)?
- What content formats and messaging will you invest in?
Document it into a living strategy deck to maintain consistency across channels and campaigns.
Review analytics like click-through rate and engagement over time to refine strategies. This level of coordination amplifies overall social media ROI.
Start developing your social media marketing plan using this free template. Define the audience, objectives, tactics, and metrics clearly upfront.
2: Not Understanding Your Audience on Social Media Marketing
The second mistake we see often – is not aligning content and engagement to the interests, behaviors, and pain points of your audience.
Social media removes the brand filter – you have to genuinely engage users with relevance and value.
Analyze audience demographics, the types of content they view and share, and comments they leave to determine resonance.
Integrate user-generated content as well as respond to feedback and queries on social media directly.
This humanizes the brand and nurtures audience relationships. Return customers generated from social efforts have 2x higher lifetime value.
Use social listening tools like Mention or Keyhole to quickly discover more about your audience – common questions, pain points, and conversations happening in your niche.
3: Focusing on Quantity Over Quality of Content
With algorithms favoring engagement, it’s easy to get fixated on creating more and more social updates across channels for distribution.
However, lower-quality content fails to generate genuine interest or social engagement.
As per research from BuzzSumo, evergreen long-form content garners over 70% more social shares on average compared to short-form updates.
So rather than making 100 tweets or 15 Instagram images – put effort into one highly useful, researched blog post or compelling video asset.
Promote that broadly across channels to multiply organic reach. This fuels consistent traffic and authority building.
Ensure at least 40% of social media marketing content is evergreen long-form like ebooks, articles, and videos vs. just current news or short posts. The assets will circulate for years, driving referrals.
4: Not Monitoring Key Social Media Marketing Metrics
Many marketers just post content randomly without tracking performance over time. This misses optimization opportunities.
Analyze metrics like:
- Account reach and following growth
- Engagement rates by content format
- Website traffic is being driven.
- Conversions for email lists, webinars, etc.
Find out what content themes and messaging work best. Double down on those creative approaches through a “test and repeat” methodology.
You can manually track metrics in a spreadsheet or use tools like Sprout Social for automated reporting.
This helps improve future content ROI through data-informed insights.
Prioritize shares, comments, and link click-through rates as key engagement KPIs for social media. These signal genuine user interest more than vanity metrics like followers or views.
5: Being Inconsistent in Social Media Marketing Posting
Social media marketing algorithms favor accounts that maintain predictable posting schedules. Profiles with consistent engagement seem more legitimate.
But most businesses tend to post very infrequently or in random bursts with gaps of inactivity. This hampers reach.
Figure out a sustainable posting schedule aligning with audience availability – and stick to it!
Tools like Hootsuite allow scheduling social updates in advance for consistent distributions without daily effort.
Being reliable earns followers’ trust and recurring visibility through content that followers expect. This amplifies referral traffic over time.
A good starting point is to actively post 2-3 times a week per social platform consistently. Always keep a few updates queued up in advance as well to maintain regular schedules.
6: Not Having Visually Appealing Social Content
Human brains process visual data better – social posts with relevant, high-quality images receive over 3x more engagement on average, according to research from HubSpot.
Yet many marketers stick to plain text updates without visual elements. This cripples overall attention and response rates.
Ensure all important announcements and 50%+ of regular social posts are accompanied by custom images, infographics, stats cards, or videos.
Visually striking assets entice viewers to actually read and respond vs. scrolling passively. They also get shared more often, which expands organic reach.
Check out Canva, Piktochart, and Snappa for easily creating engaging social media marketing graphics and images optimized for each platform. Most offer templates and automation.
7: Not Collaborating With Influencers
Influencer marketing on social networks is surging – with a predicted $20 billion market size by 2028, according to Business Insider.
Yet only 12% of marketers have tapped into partnering with social media marketing influencers per Sprout Social.
Micro-influencers with 20K-100K niche followers are relatively affordable to collaborate with via:
- Brand integrations in content
- Spotlights of your products
- Co-hosted giveaways
This instantly expands awareness among interested follower bases. Furthermore, the social proof drives more organic engagement and conversions.
Start by finding ideal influencer fits for your brand using tools like BuzzSumo and Traackr before pitching campaigns.
Prioritize working with micro-influencers with 5k- 50k engaged followers. They often deliver the highest engagement at scale for lower costs than mainstream internet celebs.
8: Not Responding to Direct Messages and Comments
Social media marketing allows customers and prospects to contact brands directly via DMs, comments, tweets, etc.
But alarmingly, over 50% of social messages get ignored, as per Sprout Social. This leaves money on the table and gradually erodes brand sentiment.
Instead, set aside dedicated time daily to respond to pending Twitter and Instagram DM inquiries and comments across recent posts.
Quick resolution at scale breeds positive word-of-mouth and mitigates public complaints. Going further, set up workflows so no messages go untouched for over 24 hours.
Social conversations handled efficiently nurture customer relationships while providing a pulse on current perceptions. Market intelligence and sales opportunities are revealed.
Response rate and average resolution times for social messages should become core CX metrics to optimize continuously – not left for afterthoughts.
9: Not Keeping Up With Social Media Marketing Trends
From new ad formats and shopping integrations to video remixes – social platforms keep innovating with features and capabilities.
However, 70% of marketers are not staying on top of leveraging emerging social media marketing trends, according to Sprout Social.
Make it a weekly habit to browse through the latest developments across each major platform:
- Facebook Updates
- Instagram Business Innovation
- Pinterest Trends
Early adoption of the next breakthrough features before competition multiplies marketing impact as interest surges. Jumping on early truly pays dividends.
Use tools like Buzzsumo Trends to get alerted for the latest viral social content formats, memes, and features gaining traction. Be among the first brands to leverage emerging trends.
10: Not Experimenting Extensively
Finally, failing to test different content types, posting times, ad formats, etc, hurts social media marketing performance. You never know what resonates best with your audience until you experiment rigorously.
Allocate 10% of budgets specifically towards testing speculative social content types and advertising approaches monthly.
Try multiple angles – giveaways vs. emotional storytelling vs. list posts, video trailers vs. Carousel album vs. static images, Twitter Polls vs. Quotes vs. generic text, etc.
Track engagement metrics diligently for each experiment through Google Analytics goals tracking. Double down on what gets the most traction through repeat testing.
Agile experimentation is the only way to unlock channel-specific performance opportunities as algorithms and preferences shift.
Aim to test at least three new content formats or variants monthly per social platform. Be sure to share experiments internally across teams to inform future best practices.
Let’s Recap Social Media Marketing Pitfalls to Avoid
There we have it – the top 10 social media marketing mistakes that sabotage ROI, along with fixes:
- Not defining KPIs and strategies.
- Poor audience targeting
- Valuing quantity over content quality
- Not monitoring analytics
- Inconsistent posting schedules
- Bland content lacking visual appeal
- Ignoring influencer collaborations
- Unresponsiveness to comments and DMs
- Missing out on trending platform capabilities
- Failing to experiment iteratively
Following the tips in this social media guide sets you on the right path to amplify organic reach, engagement rates, lead generation, and return from social efforts.
Don’t miss out on the power of social media! Digital Byteteck helps you leverage the latest trends and best practices to maximize your social media marketing impact.
Schedule a call today!
