Effective social media is never easy but if
you don't get these basics right, it's impossible.
Social media marketing is something you need
to be doing. It’s too effective when it comes to growing your business to
ignore it. As more businesses make it a larger component of its marketing
strategies, I see more mistakes being made.
Here are four mistakes you don't want to
make on social media.
1. You're not interacting with
followers.
Guess what the number one line of
communication is for customer service? Social media.
The majority of consumers are
constantly plugged into social media, which is the reason social media is
a major customer support tool. I see a lot of businesses that understand this,
but its social media feed is just a long list of support replies.
Since your followers are plugged
in around the clock, use it as an opportunity to create raving fans of
your business. Every business is going to have a different audience and target market,
so you need to think of content that your followers would be likely to engage
with.
For example, if your audience is millennials,
memes might be a good play. Memes spark engagement, like comments and social
shares, generating buzz about your business. Remember, your social media posts
don’t have to be traditional advertisements to convert followers into
customers.
2. You're overly promotional.
Continuing where the previous point left off,
don’t post ad after ad, and expect your followers to stick around.
An offer here and there is fine, but if your
followers feel that all of your posts are glorified advertisements, they will
find other accounts to follow and leave you behind. They don’t need you. You
need them.
3. You don't include
calls-to-action (CTAs).
Collecting followers alone isn’t going to
magically translate into increased sales and revenue. Every social media
profile gives you a place to put your website link, yet so many businesses miss
out on an opportunity to collect leads, or push traffic directly to an
offer because it simply puts its website’s homepage URL in these sections.
Don’t do that. Instead, put a link to your
newsletter offer, downloadable whitepaper or a direct-to-purchase offer. Most
clicks originating from social media and hitting your homepage are wasted
clicks. Nobody has time to try to find offers. Send them directly to your
offers, and this will greatly increase your conversion rates.
You should also mix in some CTAs in your
posts. CTAs don’t have to be promotional.
Let’s assume you created a very informative
infographic for your blog and want to drive traffic to it. Most businesses
would just post the URL on social media and hope people will check it out. By
including a strong CTA, such as, “You have to check out this cool infographic
we just did -- especially point No. 3,” will drive significantly more
traffic than just listing the post title and a link.
4. You spread yourself too
thin.
You have to accept the fact that you more
than likely can’t be active on all social media channels, unless you have a
dedicated social media team or outsource your social media to a digital agency.
It will benefit you much more if you are
great on three social media outlets, rather than mediocre on more. Pick the
social networks that your business thrives on, and focus on making your impact
even bigger.
With just a small handful of social networks
to worry about, it makes answering messages and engaging with your followers
much more manageable. The faster you can reply and the more you can engage, the
stronger that connection will become. Social media is a great tool to build
relationships that create life-long brand supporters.
Written By: Jonathan Long
Credit: Entrepreneur.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment