Here’s a little-known secret outside of professional social media managers – social media success takes time.
It takes time to hone your business’ message, find your audience, and get sustainable interaction and engagement. It’s about consistency, constant use of great content, and using the data available to make adjustments.
During all of this, there are chances to make mistakes. Mistakes on your social media channels can set your business back, big time.
5 Common Social Media Mistakes That Cost Your Business
1. Inconsistency and Errors
There’s nothing worse than having to go back and clean up social media mistakes. Inconsistent messages and errors can cost way more time than what it takes to edit or re-post.
Too many corrected errors can really set you back by causing your audience to mistrust you. Work to keep your momentum by minimizing errors and inconsistent messaging.
2. Unclear Call to Action
What do you want your customers (aka target audience) to do when you communicate with them on social networks?
You have to tell them!
We always say, “Be clear, not clever”. Make sure your audience understands, clearly, what to do to support your business. If the message is unclear, don’t expect results.
3. Over-Selling
Over-selling goes hand-in-hand with #2. In an effort to provide a clear call to action, don’t over-sell in the process.
Over-selling can be a huge turn-off on social media pages. It’s the equivalent of the car salesman running right out to you with car deals when you really just wanted to browse the lot.
If every post on your Facebook page or every tweet is asking for a sale, you’ll lose your audience and momentum rapidly.
4. Think Before You Post
You read a terse comment or negative review on one of your social media platforms and immediately fire back a response. This sets off a chain reaction of continuous defending, or worse, deleting, that may last days.
This is hard to recover from. We’ve seen it time and time again.
In fact, not thinking before you post, or posting when angry or emotional, can cause the complete undoing of all of the social media goodwill you’ve gained up to that point.
Think before you post! Always.
5. Ignoring Customers
If you ignore your customers, they will keep talking. In fact, they will talk about how awful it is that you ignored them.
They will talk to their friends and family about it. They will leave negative comments everywhere online. And they will stop talking to you.
When it comes to social media, don’t ignore your customers!
Just like posting without thinking, when you ignore your customers, you can undo so much effort and time spent building your brand. Good or bad, respond to your customers. They will respect you for doing so.
Social media campaigns take time and effort. Don’t set yourself back with mistakes that can easily be avoided. Be consistent, clear, diligent and responsive. Your audience is watching.