Are you making social media marketing mistakes that cause your campaigns and efforts to go down the drain?

You’re not alone. 

According to survey data, 76% of consumers bought products they saw in social media posts from brands. 

If you fall for the common pitfalls of social media marketing, you could fail to get your products and brand in front of your target audiences on Facebook and Instagram. You’ll lose tons of engagement, conversion, and sales opportunities. 

The trick is to understand the common mistakes that can ruin your social media marketing initiatives to avoid making them.

That’s what this guide is all about.

Continue reading to learn the four blunders you should steer clear of and what you should do instead to get more social media followers for your small business and meet your marketing goals.   

The Most Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes And Ways To Resolve Them

Mistake 1: Not tailoring your content to target audiences

A huge mistake you can make on social media is to ignore what your target audiences want. 

For instance, posting content you think is interesting but doesn’t resonate with your target audience can hurt your engagement rates. 

After all, your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram audiences are less likely to care or be interested in your content if you don’t tailor it to their interests. 

You don’t get points for posting content that doesn’t offer value or a benefit to your followers, either. 

What to do instead:

Understand your target audience’s interests, preferences, and behavior. Use this information to create relevant and appealing content to spark their interest and engage them. 

The higher your engagement rates, the better the chances of your audiences turning into loyal followers and customers. 

Conduct audience research to understand your target audience better. 

Similar to how you would use Shopify abandoned cart apps to win back customers, use tools such as social media analytics and surveys to gather relevant content performance data. Leverage the information to create content that resonates and aligns with your audience’s interests and needs.

For example, if you’re an online teacher, consider applying the best practices of social media marketing for tutors, tailoring your content to students’ needs, and evoking their interest in your courses. 

Or, if you’re a retail company, share a carousel post or photo dump of User-Generated Content (UGC) showcasing customers wearing or using your products. 

The retail chain Aeropostale does this by sharing photos of customers showing off their #stayhomewithaero outfits. 

It’s a great way to share real-life experiences with your brand to engage your social media audience better. 

Include relevant and compelling photo dump captions to help draw more eyeballs to your content and add hashtags to make your post more discoverable.  

Mistake 2: Failing to establish a consistent brand voice

Not having a consistent brand voice on social media can confuse your target audience, making it challenging for them to recognize your brand. 

If your audiences don’t recognize your brand, they will not likely trust you and buy your products. 

Also, it won’t help your brand’s reputation and hinder your efforts to become famous on social media to gain a bigger following and customers. 

The key is understanding your brand’s tone, messaging, and language and applying them to your social media and other marketing content and initiatives. 

What to do instead:

Develop a brand style guide that outlines your brand’s tone of voice, messaging, and language. Reference this when creating content for your social media accounts. 

A good example of a company with a consistent brand voice is Ben & Jerry’s. You can easily recognize the brand’s playful and casual tone across social media and marketing content. 

Ensure a consistent brand voice to maintain a strong identity that your audiences can easily recognize on social media.

Mistake 3: Not engaging with your followers

If you only use social media to promote your products or services and don’t engage with your audiences, you’ll lose opportunities to gain more followers and customers. 

Your brand can’t connect with your target audience better, and, in turn, you’ll fail to foster trust and build customer relationships. 

We all know what failed customer relationships can lead to—poor profits.  

What to do instead:

Regularly interact with your followers by responding to comments and messages and actively participating in social media conversations relevant to your brand.

Doing so helps show your brand’s human side, which social media audiences are more likely to connect with and respond to positively. 

It also helps you maintain and boost your audience engagement. 

Entice your followers to engage with your content by asking questions, hosting contests and giveaways, running polls and surveys, and regularly posting content on social media. 

KitKat’s Instagram Story asks viewers about their favorite ways to have a break and is a classic example of engaging social media content. 

Mistake 4: Failing to track and measure your results

Not monitoring and measuring your social media marketing efforts makes it hard to determine what’s working and what’s not. You’ll miss potential gaps in your campaigns and strategies and fail to adjust accordingly to improve your results. 

For instance, you could invest time and money into creating social media posts to promote and drive traffic to your blog post on an ExportYourStore review.  

If you don’t track click-throughs, views, visits, and engagement, you won’t see that your efforts aren’t working.   

You could also lose money and resources on social media campaigns that don’t drive your expected results and do not know why. 

What to do instead:

Regularly track and analyze your social media metrics to determine your efforts’ effectiveness. 

Use social media marketing software with robust analytics features, such as Vista Social, Hootsuite, Socialpilot, or another, to monitor and analyze your metrics and results. 

Then, leverage the information to gain valuable insights and make informed decisions about your social media strategy.

Conclusion

Social media marketing can be excellent for your business, but it’s essential to avoid common mistakes that can negatively impact your results. 

Keep away from costly mistakes and maximize your social media campaign’s effectiveness by tailoring your content to your target audience, adopting a consistent brand voice, engaging with your followers, and tracking and measuring your performance. 

Following best practices gets you well on your way to implementing a successful and impactful social media marketing campaign.

If constantly churning out social media content takes too much time and resources, you can always work with our professional agency offering best-in-class social media marketing services.