Over the past 10 years, social media has bloomed into a fantastic free tool for brands and businesses to leverage. 

That’s why 90% of businesses use social media to their advantage. In fact, many online businesses create and post content daily.

Creating social media accounts are free and a great form of free advertisement. Unfortunately, creating a social media account on one platform and posting every now and then isn’t enough.

There’s a lot more to it than most people expect. And social media mistakes in business can be catastrophic and cause you to leave money on the table.

In this article, we make sure you steer clear of 6 social media mistakes made by many brands, so you can make more money online and grow your business.

1. Not Being Consistent

If you take nothing else away from this article, take this first tip. It’s one of the most important factors when it comes to social media marketing.

The most important rule of social media marketing is to create a content schedule. For example:

When will you post and what will you post on your social media accounts?

Answer both questions for each social media platform you intend to create content on and you’ll succeed for sure.

Here’s a great example. You want to start an online business and begin by using the free WooCommerce plugin after creating a WordPress site. Now you want to advertise your online business to your target audience. While there’s nothing wrong with utilizing paid advertising through social media, maybe you don’t want to spend that much money. 

So, you move on to Instagram instead. Instagram is a great social media platform that allows you to share pictures of your products, create videos, go live, and share links to your site content – for free.

A good social media content schedule might look something like this:

• One post in the morning every day (somewhere between 8-10 in the morning)
• One post at the end of the day (somewhere between 4-6 at night)
• One live stream a week that shows off new inventory or something you think interests customers
• Two to three videos a week showing off a product, even if in .gif format

Of course, this is just an example.

The point of this is to give yourself time to plan. Creating content in the moment is painful and won’t yield positive results. Instead, create your content ahead of time and plan out when you’ll share it with your followers.

2. Not Having a Content Strategy

Every brand needs a content strategy if they have any kind of social media marketing going on. So, it should come as no surprise that consistency goes hand in hand with the brand’s content strategy.

Consistency is a part of your content strategy; however, we’ve mentioned it separately because it’s essential!

When thinking about your content strategy, you’ll want to consider many factors. Here are a few:

• What formatting will you use?
• What tone do you want to use? Friendly? Formal?
• Whose in charge of content?
• What’s the goal of posting on each platform?
• What content goes best on each platform?

You see where I’m going with this. Figuring out all the kinks allows you to have fewer hiccups and prevent confusion with social media marketing. After all, once you have a solid handle on your website’s content, you can post that content to social media with ease.

The goal is to answer as many questions as possible to take as much guesswork out of it. Often answering these questions allows people to understand what they want to get out of social media marketing.

3. Not Using the Right Media Formats

When posting on social media, you should always keep this list in mind and use it to make your content as visual and engaging as possible:

1. Video & Live Stream
2. Audio
3. Video with text & no audio (music in the background)
4. Words with a video
5. Words with a picture
6. Text

It’s all about reaching people and keeping their attention. 

What does that best? 

Video.

Why?

It has visuals and sound.

That said, sometimes video isn’t an option. In addition, it’s good to diversify your content on social media. In that case, consider incorporating audio bites from a podcast.

Don’t have a podcast?

Maybe text with a picture is the way to go. Some platforms like Instagram allow for live stream, video (IGTV), and pictures with text.

The key is to think about the topic you want to make a post for. Next, think about what format could get that message across the best.

And remember, don’t force anything. If something works best as a video, then don’t make it a picture with text and vice versa. Nothing drives people away from your social media content like them sitting through a 10-minute video that could have been a picture with text…or a one minute video.

4. Not Interacting with Followers

Not interacting with your followers not only makes your brand look bad, a lot of social media platforms reward creator engagement. In fact, many popular platforms include user and creator engagement as one of the main pieces of their algorithm.

Here’s a short list of platforms that value interaction from both creators and users:

• YouTube
• Medium
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Pinterest

When interacting with people who comment on your content, you’re showing that you care. Not only that, but you’re also putting a voice to your brand. Giving your brand a voice is a good thing. It helps you establish a solid presence, boost leads, and of course, secure more sales.

5. Not Using the Same Voice

As we mentioned above, your business has a voice. This voice comes through in the content you provide to others, as well as when you reply to people. Not having a consistent voice is one of the most common social media mistakes any business can make.

If your brand is professional, then a professional voice might be the best option for you. If you’re running something small like a Shopify or WooCommerce store, consider a friendly yet informative tone for your brand.

Having a voice that doesn’t match your brand is one of the worst social media mistakes, but it can get worse.

If you have multiple people creating, posting, and replying on your website and social media accounts, your business’ voice can get lost in translation.

It helps to define your brand’s voice before getting started with content creation. Doing this reminds your content creation team of the voice you’d like them to use. This sticks with your team while creating graphics, writing metadata, and even replying on your content that’s posted on social media.

6. Not Using Hashtags

Hashtags are still just as vital as they’ve always been. In the early days of hashtags, they started becoming somewhat of a meme to some people. People didn’t take them as seriously as they should. And that was a huge mistake.

On the other hand, those who took hashtags seriously saw considerable growth and reach in their content.

Using hashtags in your social media marketing is still a great way to reach new people on almost all platforms. It’s a great tool to use in every post you can.

Almost all social media platforms use hashtags. Here’s a few:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Facebook

To help you with your hashtag game, here are a few tools to check out:

• Hashtagify – top Twitter hashtags
• Keyhole – hashtag analytics for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
• Trendsmap – trending topics & hashtags on Twitter

Another approach to this is to use Google Trends to find out how prevalent specific topics are in an overall scope. Google Trends tracks searches on the Google search engine. This is one of the most powerful tools for social media marketing and content creation in general. Google Trends is also a 100% free tool to use!

Final Thoughts

And there you have it! The top 6 social media mistakes to avoid at all costs.

It’s crucial for brands to create a consistent voice and to interact with followers. Bus most importantly, if you want to grow your brand and your business, the key is consistency.

Are you ready to really excite those that have shown interest in your brand on social media? Check out these top WordPress giveaway plugins that you can use on your site to create engaging contests and boost interactions across all social media platforms.

Have we left out any important social media mistakes to avoid? If so, we’d love to hear all about them in the comments below!

The post 6 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs appeared first on WPHacks.

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