9 SOCIAL MEDIA MISTAKES YOUR BUSINESS MIGHT BE MAKING.

Social media is a very big part of marketing in 2020. It forms the whole basis for the field of digital marketing. There are hundreds and thousands of multi-million dollar businesses all across the world that do not even have a proper office but run completely on the internet. Thereby, it is important that an online marketer is constantly at the top of their games when it comes to brand promotion digitally.

Listed below are 9 common mistakes on social media that your business might be making.

1.NOT OPTIMIZING YOUR FEED

The first step to social media marketing must be to ensure that your feed is visually appealing. Most people prefer a softer colour palette and with minimalistic yet aesthetic posts.

A big mistake that certain marketers make is choosing bright colours for posts. Maintaining a proper pattern of updates is also extremely important. This shows people that you pay attention to details and care about the smallest of things.

The quality of pictures and videos that you upload must also be taken care of. Low quality pictures are accountable for bad publicity and people are clearly going to form a wrong image of your brand as pictures and videos are responsible for forming a very important first impression.

It is hence important to stick to light and aesthetic colours like baby pink, yellow or grey. Your feed also shows people are your choices and personal preferences and this definitely plays a big role in attracting quality audiences.

2.EITHER UPDATING WAY TOO OFTEN OR IRREGULARLY

The time of your upload or update on any social media site, be it Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest among the most popular ones, is extremely important when it concerns your audience reach.

Every social media platform has several features available that you can use for understanding when your target audience is the most active and also when your page is the most interacted with. If you are an Indian company with a larger customer base in the United States but you upload based on Indian Standard Time, then your audience is probably asleep.

And by the time they come online, your post is buried under several newer ones.
Another major problem is the frequency of updates. If you post way too often, then your customers are bound to get irritated with your constant uploads and may resort to muting you.

But again, if you do not post regularly, your feed will be dead and you lose contact with your customers and they will eventually end up forgetting you. The key is to find a sweet spot in between the two.

3.TARGETING THE WRONG AUDIENCE AND NOT MAKING PROPER USE OF THE INSIGHTS AVAILABLE

As we already mentioned earlier, there are several tools available at your disposal to check your post insights, be it on Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook.

These tools let you check when your followers are the most active, the number of accounts your uploads reached, the demographics of your audiences, be it their ages, location or gender.

These features also help you see how the percentage of people outside your followers base who interacted with your posts and checked your profile out.

You can also see how many times your posts and profile was shared. Many times, some marketers are naive and do not make complete use of all these available features and more often than not, end up targeting the wrong audience who may actually not be interested in your brand.

Hence, proper knowledge is important and you must ensure that you customise and update your content strategy regularly to meet the changing demands of your customers and also keep up with the latest trends.

4.PROBLEMS WITH THE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES

SEO is one of the most important aspects of social media marketing. SEO techniques are what make your blogs and websites appear as the first few results after running a random google search.

Many times, people make this mistake of not taking search engine optimization tools and techniques seriously. This can lead to dire consequences for your brand as without proper SEO, people won’t even be able to find your pages in Google or any other search engines.

This is especially important for the growth of your brand and is not so much about your pre-existing audience. Using language and keywords that do not pertain to the kind of content you want to pertain or to the age of your target audience will mean that they will probably never see it even if you do everything else.

Using prominent hashtags, proper links, popular keywords and phrases along with easy language are the keys to avoid making this mistake.

5.NO VARIETY IN CONTENT
Sometimes we are so engrossed into constantly uploading pictures, videos, newer blogs, stories, etc., that we miss out on variety. We end up uploading similar content over and over again, if not absolutely the same. This can lead to grave consequences again because people will probably start losing interest in your constant updates if they don’t find variety or anything informative.

You will lose out on a lot of customers because people won’t have a reason to follow or subscribe to you anymore. The key to avoid these problems is to ensure that you create a certain buzz around your upcoming posts and updates.

The motive here is to make people look forward to and wait for your uploads. This will keep them interested in you for a longer time.

6.COMPROMISING WITH THE ETHICS AND MORALS OF THE ORGANIZATION
There are certain beliefs that run every organization. It is important to have morals, ethics and beliefs in order to be loyal to yourself, your brand and your customers. This gives your customers a sense of stability as well.

Sometimes, it may so happen that marketers engage themselves in debates online. In such cases, while it is important to have an opinion and state it, always remember that you are not speaking for yourself, but the entire organization and brand as a whole.

Debating relentlessly, making derogatory remarks, compromising with your dignity and that of the brand will jeopardize the entire firm’s future and will form an extremely bad image in front of your customers and potential investors.

7.POSTING CONTENT THAT MAY BE POLITICAL IN NATURE
This is nothing but an extension of the previous point. Politics is an extremely sensitive issue. While it is healthy for individuals to have political opinions, the same cannot be said about businesses.

It is better to be apolitical and behave professionally and diplomatically on the internet in order to ensure that you do not hurt any sentiments and lose out of customers and profits.

Also, in order to peacefully function and run a brand, it is important to be in the good books of the government. Not doing so and indulging in the wrong things can make it difficult to continue operating. It is best to steer clear of anything political on social media.

8.INCOMPREHENSIBLE LANGUAGE
Language plays a big role when it comes to interacting with people on social media. Using language that is difficult to understand or comprehend will drive the common user away.

Showcasing your literary prowess is probably not a very good idea when it comes to digital marketing. Most people have difficulty in understanding tough words that are not very common and, not to mention this completely throws off your SEO strategies.

One thing to remember is creating something that is fun to read, easily understandable and SEO friendly. You must create content for the common man who may not be very comfortable with difficult vocabulary.

The key here is to use common words and phrase them in a way so that they appear catchy to the reader.

9.NOT MAKING COMPLETE USE OF THE VARIOUS INTERACTIVE FEATURES AVAILABLE

Facebook and Instagram offer the stories, comments and direct messages feature to all their users that you can use effectively to communicate with your audience and understand their perspectives towards your brand.

The Live feature is also available in Facebook, Instagram and Youtube where you can speak to your followers and subscribers in real time.

There are several sticker options that instagram gives you like the Q&A feature, poll, countdown and quiz features. Not all marketers optimize their usage of these tools. Constant interaction with your customers is important in the virtual world since you are unable to interact with them in person.

This helps you make improvements to your content and your brand. This also helps understand what people exactly expect from you and whether you are meeting their expectations. This plays a major role in the process of building trust.

There are several other mistakes that marketers make on the internet every day. However, the key is to always keep learning and trying.

It is more important to realise and rectify your mistakes than making lesser mistakes. As the old saying goes, mistakes are the best teachers.