Five Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2019

The year 2018 is shaping out to be a powerful year for social media marketers. But, one of the most significant problems that marketers face even today is their hazy understanding of a social media strategy! By identifying what needs to be done and what not, one can easily formulate and put in place a successful social media plan that results in more brand awareness, customer engagement, and an upswing in their generation of leads and sales revenues, writes Neel Sinha, CEO of MyLnk.

Every marketer today wants to make their brand presence felt. That is the reason why social media is being leveraged on a big scale.  Whether one owns an established business or a startup, social media marketing is something that everyone is using to reach and communicate with the customers. Doesn’t it make sense to be in a place where the crowd is? One often comes across some social media marketing activities that fail. While, on the other hand, some Facebook and Twitter pages become popular than the others. Many times, marketers observe that their competitors are doing better than them in social media marketing!

Everybody does make mistakes. How can social media marketers be any different? But the fact is, making too many mistakes can see the followers dwindle and their count drop. Indeed, it does affect the revenue of a business. As with all mistakes, the first step is understanding and becoming aware of them. It then becomes easier to avoid them in the future. Let’s discuss top five common social media marketing mistakes that one must avoid in the coming year – 2019.

1. Undefined goals and targeting the wrong audience. As a marketer, one may be working very hard, yet they may suffer badly if they aim and shoot in the dark. A marketer needs to ensure that they are not targeting the wrong audience. The key to success in social media marketing is to know and reach the target audience.

Most marketers commit one of the biggest social media marketing mistakes, that is, not properly defining their goals. Can anyone win without a goal? Once the goals are set, one can start working on their social media strategy and create a plan. For example, some of the goals that work well with social media could be to improve customer engagement or increase event attendance or increase website visits, etc.

2. Multiple profiles, over-promotion, wrong reaction. Creating more than one profile on social networking websites such as Facebook or Twitter will not only waste one’s time and other resources, but it could confuse the followers too. One will be better off focusing all their efforts in one direction, getting people to follow their business by creating a single profile in each of the commonly used social media platforms.

The social media platform is all about being social and communicative. Most visitors on a social media page hate promotional content. If too much time is spent on promotional activities, chances of losing followers or likes are high. So, it is advisable for marketers to avoid over-promotion and keep it effective and efficient.

In reality, being on social media is all about being “social” that is, one needs to have more and more conversations and engagements. Many times, one’s profile has updates but no participation in the conversation. Lack of conversation with followers can decrease the value of social presence. And, this aspect needs to be carefully addressed to. At the same time, one need not ignore a negative feedback. Doing so could even derail a social media marketing campaign.

The negative comments may not get much response from other users, but when people see something negative, though they may not comment on it, the damage is done. Negative feedback is not always a sign of a problem, most often it is simply criticizing the brand. Marketers should avoid censoring such users. React to those messages somehow, but avoid reacting harshly. They should respond to the negative comments in such a way that it will convert those negatives into positives! Equally important is to avoid deleting a negative comment. Instead ask the customer to call or email you, keeping the tone helpful and polite.

Reacting poorly or deleting posts can give a bad reputation that will be hard to shake. Avoid that!

3. Not putting a right strategy in place!  It is essential to define and implement the right strategy for social media marketing just as prior to starting any business, niche market, product, and audience are identified. On the contrary, by joining the social network, creating a profile, loading it with info, posting great stuff to attract attention and then suddenly disappearing is not going to help! Within no time the page is bound to turn into a barren land!

Followers will wonder why they are there, while others seeking answers and getting no replies will lose trust. And, so the social media presence could soon become a flop show! This explains, the need for a social media marketing strategy to be identified before going live on various social media platforms.

The social media marketing strategy must ensure to improve the presence of the business on different platforms and not let it drift. The main goal for any marketer in using social media is to gain likes and followers, and that is mainly to create a new source of sales leads. If one is not sure of their goal they will not attain it. Similarly, without a proper strategy in place, the entire purpose of social media marketing shall be defeated.

Therefore, to get success in social media, marketing strategy should have well-defined goals, target audience must be identified, tactics to be employed must be implemented, the right amount of time should be invested and proficient workforce should be employed to perform the tasks.

4. Automated link posting and not tracking analytics. Automated link posting gives an impression of a spamming site! It is the mistake many marketers make by posting back-links to their website. Automation eases the load on manual efforts, but randomness doesn’t pay, and it must be avoided.

There is no point in using social media without any insights. One usually measures the success of their SEO and e-mail marketing campaigns with an analytics software. Similarly, they should track and assess the performance metrics of their social media campaigns. One can easily use the metrics provided by the platform or utilize an external service or software to gain further insights.

By measuring the quality of followers, the popularity of posts, and the extent of influence to gain data will help in one’s future social media marketing efforts. MyLnk is an innovative link shortener service and a URL management platform that gives an opportunity to customize a link. It is the perfect solution to reach the right audience with branded and customized website links. MyLnk is a platform that powers marketing.

5. Not investing in video and neglecting paid advertising. The content one posts over social media channels are crucial, as posting repetitively – especially if it is self-promotional, the followers can get irritated or lose interest. Engagement can be increased by varying the type of content, like:

• Business-related blog posts, articles, videos, and photos.
• Links to external content that is relevant to the interests of followers.
• Shares or retweets from other players.

Social media video marketing plays a significant role in the purchasing decisions of consumers. There lies a big opportunity in this area and neglecting it is not a good idea. And one needn’t have to shell out huge cash to make compelling videos on social media! Most smartphones have great camera abilities, and creating candid videos are gaining in popularity.

However, care must be taken not to post videos that are hazy, or with poor sound quality, or do not make any sense. In the coming year, the video is likely to account for eighty percent of global internet traffic. Therefore, it is advisable for any marketer to avoid the mistake of neglecting to invest in videos in the coming year – 2019.

Now coming to paid advertisements in social media – most social media platforms are pay-to-play for businesses. If one is planning to advertise on social media, it should be with a purpose and objective! Using platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest; the below goals are achieved:

• Bringing traffic to the business website,
• Building brand awareness,
• Generating leads,
• Boosting engagement with prospects, etc.

The most effective platforms with highest hits for general audiences are Facebook and YouTube. LinkedIn is ideal for B2B companies. Organic reach that implies reaching the audience using the news feeds on a page or as shared by friends on Facebook hovers under ten percent. It means that the likelihood of a post or message being seen by the target audience, over social media in general, is slim or negligible.

As one embraces social marketing, their social media strategy is likely to grow by including social media advertising. It may appear odd or even scary to move from an organic social strategy to investing real money!  But, it is always advisable for any marketer to avoid neglecting paid advertisement over social media in the coming year – 2019 and stay relevant and competitive.

Are you making any of the above social media marketing mistakes that we discussed above? Don’t worry; you can quickly turn it around for your business. Start with a fixed goal, know the target audience and follow the instructions mentioned above. If having any doubt or trouble there, always go ahead and reach out to a social media marketing expert  – it could save a lot of your time along with avoiding the social media marketing mistakes you have been making all along.