Skip These Social Media Missteps

Set up for success

By Erica Rascón on Oct 21, 2015 in Marketing

You’ve created profiles and set aside ample time to update your social media, but you’re still not getting the traffic and following that you desire. What’s a social media novice to do?

Social media has so many moving parts, so many variables, that it may seem impossible to get a grip on what to change when what you’re doing isn’t working. We’re here to help you troubleshoot a few common errors that can sabotage your social media efforts.

1. You never developed a strategy. We skip strategies because they’re tough. They require evaluation and tweaking and reevaluation. It’s a lot easier to just start posting aimlessly and hope for engagement! Unfortunately, that can also be a huge waste of time and effort. Worse, you won’t know where you’re going wrong if you don’t get the engagement that you seek.

Take the time to develop a strategy by answering the following questions: Who is my audience? Which platforms does my audience use the most? When are they most likely to check their social media? What message(s) do I want to send about my brand? These questions are just the tip of the iceberg, but they’re a great starting point.

2. You forgot to work smarter, not harder… Posting can be exhausting, which may be why you don’t post as often as you should. Save time by finding a post scheduler for your platforms of choice, such as Buffer or Tailwind. You’ll stay on your Followers’ radars when you share consistently, and they’ll expect to hear from you and share your great content. (Note: when scheduling, you won’t want to share the exact same thing the exact same way on every platform. Native marketing is essential to success!)

3. …or you never learned about smart posting. Scheduling posts is more than loading up the queue with reposts and links. Anyone who takes a look at your wall will notice that the human element missing. That will be a turnoff. Be sure to integrate timely, personalized posts into your schedule.

You may also be too me-minded. If all of your posts are about your brand and your products, you’re proving the limit of your worth. Branch out by sharing industry-relevant resources, responding to your followers, and initiating contact with your audience.

4. You only share your content once. What a waste! You need to share your unique content more than once. Let’s say that you’re sharing a blog post. Silver Egg Media recommends:

• You publish a post directly to the blog
• Notify your Followers on Twitter using the exact blog post title
• Tweet about the post again, this time with a relevant variation on the title
• Tweet about it the next day with an excerpt from the post
• Tweet the next week with yet another variation on the title
• The next month with, you guessed it, a different title, or excerpt
• And then post again a month later

This gives your content a shot at reaching out to a broader audience without spamming your Followers with replicas of the same post back-to-back.

5. You forgot to engage. Don’t just post, post, post like a narcissistic maniac. Be sure to respond, inquire, and interact with your audience. Social media requires being sociable (in cyberspace, anyway) so get out there and mingle.

6. You never found your voice. Do your posts feel dry, or like anyone else in your industry could’ve created them? Do you get a bit bored scrolling through your own wall? That’s likely because you took a distant, third-party voice rather than using your own unique voice and style to promote your brand.

Did you recently get out of a social media rut? Share which tips and insights worked for you!