17 Worst Social Media Mistakes Marketers Make

Most businesses know the importance of social media marketing for the growth of their business. While everyone is striving to get the most out of social media by implementing the best social media marketing strategies, it is common for marketers to make mistakes that they don’t even see coming at them.

You may be implementing best practices for your social media strategy. Still, unless you keep making these 17 social media mistakes, chances are that your social media platforms may not gain enough traction.

We’ll guide you on what mistakes to avoid on your social media in this post.

Mistake #1: Failing to Set Meaningful Goals

Failing to set meaningful social media goals that align with the company goals is the foundation of a successful social media strategy. Outlining goals and action plans gives your social media workflow a clear direction. It saves your time that is otherwise wasted on pointless social media activities.

Mistake #2: Not Choosing the Right Platforms

Spending time and money on the wrong platforms is another common social media mistake that many marketers make. The golden rule of marketing is that you have to meet your customers where they are, which also applies to social media marketing. 

Each platform has its own importance, and finding the platform that works for your business goals is crucial. It’s not always necessary to choose only a few outlets for your social media marketing but prioritizing and understanding where to spend most of your time and efforts is essential.

Mistake #3: Not Advertising

Social media platforms have evolved, and you can modify your buyer’s persona to target your content towards specific people. Spending money on advertising can help you get your expected results. Start your test with small budgets to see if it works. If it does, then don’t hesitate to scale up.

You need to spend some time going through the profiles of your target audience and scrape out every detail you can. Then make Venn diagrams and see what’s expected. This will help you structure an effective buyer’s persona.

Mistake #4: Ignoring Your Reviews

Whenever a negative comment pops up, don’t come up with a lame excuse while addressing it on social media. People generally understand when you’re trying to fudge an issue.

Reviews are one of the best tools to see where you’re headed. Never ignore the responses you get. A negative comment is an opportunity to improve. If possible, contact your reviewers and ask them how you can improve. Once you make the changes, take their feedback. This is a very effective way to polish your image and do away with bugs or problems. Customers’ expectations are constantly changing, but you should still do your best to meet their needs.

Mistake #5: Boring Visual Content

Brainrules.net says that a person who hears a piece of information will remember 10% of it three days later, while someone who sees that same information in a picture will recall 65% of it.

Visuals are a must for social media marketing campaigns. Make sure people remember your creatives. Image editing tools like Visme, Canva and Piktochart are very useful in helping you create your visual content.

Mistake #6: Not Proofreading Social Content

Proofreading your posts before launching them online on any social media platform is a prudent thing to do. An account that has posts with many errors reeks of unprofessionalism. The last thing you would want is to be mocked by your audience.

You should be careful because here you’re crafting your company’s public image.

Always check your facts and see if it references a sensitive issue. For example, American Apparel posted a fireworks photo of the 1986 explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. The only thing they could do was to apologize and confess ignorance.

Mistake #7: Not Being Wary of Hacks

You should be very careful with the security of your social media handles. Unethical access to your social profiles can lead to unwanted updates, unfollow flux, and other offenses. Online transactions are another weak point. A breach in security can damage your brand’s reputation.

Make use of all the security features of each platform and implement the best practices for your password.

For instance, on February 19th, 2013, Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked. It was remodeled to look like McDonald’s Twitter account, and offensive and indiscernible tweets were sent out. It lasted for about three hours until Twitter suspended the account.

Mistake #8: Abandoning Social Media Tools

Try to keep everything related to your business in one place. This will help you manage relationships smoothly, effortless customer interactions, and reach the good news and people at the right time.

You can make use of Social Media Management tools like ContentStudio and Nimble. These tools help you interact with your audience and help in the performance analytics of your social media marketing campaigns.

Mistake #9: Neglecting Call To Action

Content is everywhere. More than 2 million articles are published per day. You need to have a solid plan and campaign to get noticed. Active posting is not the only solution. You need to spend 20% of your time building the content and the rest 80% on distributing and promoting it.

It’s better to include some kind of a call-to-action while posting on social media. This call-to-action can be a button that helps you share the post on other platforms, or it acts as a trigger to post a comment. This again increases engagement which works in your favor.

Mistake #10: Not Creating Videos On Facebook

Facebook videos help you stand out. It acts as an attention grabber. Since people can’t skim videos like text, most will watch the entire thing if it’s interesting. In general, video is entertaining and informative content that people love.

This has been a video revolution year for marketers. According to Wyzowl statistics, 63% of businesses have started using video content marketing. Out of those, 82% of companies, video marketing is an integral part of their strategy. Video is progressing and will reach new heights sooner than we think. Video marketing gives you a good return on interest.

Mistake #11: Not Targeting A Specific Audience

Setting a preferred audience makes your content more relevant. While organizing local events, make sure you use Facebook’s preferred audience feature wisely so that your global audience is not distracted by the posts that are irrelevant to them.

Facebook’s algorithm assigns a personalized relevancy score to every post you can see and shows you the most relevant position you first. By limiting your posts only to the appropriate audience, Facebook might more likely show your posts than less relevant posts from other brands to the audience. This is especially useful for local businesses that have a local target audience.

Mistake #12: You Don’t Try A/B Testing

If something is working smoothly and giving you enough returns, it doesn’t mean it can’t be made better. You should try different things and see what works best for your brand. Subscribe to an A/B testing tool like Replug

Try and experiment with the frequency of your posts and the time you post at. Look out for the highest reach and engagement. You can also try different cover pictures to see what generates the most response. Tweak your way through to create more traffic to your posts/blogs.

Mistake #13: You Speak Like A Robot

You need to communicate in your audience’s language on social media. Find a tone of voice and stick to it. Make sure you don’t toggle between multiple profiles. Decide on how you want your brand to be perceived and what kind of a relationship you want to have with your audience. Once decided, don’t deter. Outline a good profile of your brand and develop your own communication style. Keep in mind how audio-based social media communication is getting common with Amazon, Alexa, Cortana, etc

Don’t try to be highly professional while communicating. Your brand has a profile on social media to lessen the gap between your consumer and your brand. Hence, your tone should be informal. Consumers out there are already fed up with automated messages. So be warm.

Mistake #14: Posting Content With No Value

You shouldn’t post for the sake of posting. If your content is not good enough, it won’t get attention. You may even lose out on your audience if you post mundane content. “Throwbacks” are an excellent way to remind people of your previous posts and can save you from losing out on your audience too.

Mistake #15: Doing The Same Thing

Make sure you post varied content. Doing the same thing repeatedly can be a turn-off for your audience. If you run out of original photos, videos, or blogs, you can share any good content available online. Talk about current affairs, do life, or initiate a giveaway if you have enough content.

Mistake #16: Not Engaging

Social Media Platforms should primarily be used for socializing with your customers, prospects and spreading your brand voice on the web. Don’t forget after posting something on your platform. Follow up. And don’t post too often.

Make it a habit to reply to comments and answer queries. If you don’t have the time to respond, like the comment or take a snapshot and put up a story thanking your followers. Micro-influencers do this very often. It’s better to set aside time to respond, connect and engage with people. If your goal is to post updates, you will never achieve the set goals from your social media efforts.

Using Reply (a social monitoring and engagement tool), you can quickly respond to all mentions and messages on your Twitter profile, Facebook Page, and Instagram profile from one place.

Mistake #17: Over-Promotion

People hate advertisements, and they hate it even more if you promote yourself. Social media is all about communicating and being social. You will lose your audience if you spend too much time posting promotional content.

Your business will sell if you keep a balance between the two. Start off with twice a week and change the frequency depending on the traffic that you get for your product. You need to test and see what works for you. But don’t overdo it.

It’s not hard to avoid these mistakes but, committing them could cost your business a lot on social media. If you’re already making some of these social media mistakes, we’d recommend you address them as quickly as possible and if you’re in the planning stage of your social media marketing, keep these points in mind.