Are You Making These 5 Mistakes With Your Social Media?

1. Posting the same content on every social media channel at the same time

​​Picture this.

I’ve just liked your business page on Facebook because it looks like you share really useful and entertaining information with your followers.

Then I pop over to your Twitter account to follow you there too, because you’re obviously someone who can help me and I might be interested in using you in the future.

But to my surprise, what do you think I find when I get there?

The exact same content that I’ve just seen on your Facebook page!

That can’t be right.

So I check out your Google+ account.

The same story!

If you’re doing this, then people will quickly realise that they don’t need to follow you on more than one social media channel because they know you’re posting the exact same content on each channel at the same time.

If you’re active on more than one social media channel, vary your posts on each channel so that people have good reason to follow you on every channel.

It’s totally OK to use the same content on different social media channels, but just don’t post the same piece on every channel you’re on at the same time.
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Otherwise you’ll be missing out on an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with these potential customers and existing customers.​

2. Not scheduling your posts in advance

Life’s busy and finding the time to post useful and engaging content on all of your different social media channels each day can be an uphill struggle.
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And you know it’s best to post different content on each social media channel which makes it even harder.

Luckily there’s an easy solution to your problem.

Use a social media scheduling tool!

There are a number of social media scheduling tools out there for you to choose from eg

• Hootsuite
• Edgar
• Buffer

These tools let you schedule your social media updates well in advance, which means you can set aside some time each week, month or even quarter to schedule your posts for the next week, two weeks, three weeks etc.

Most of them offer a free plan and are very straightforward to use.

These tools are really helpful if you know you’re going to be heading into an especially busy time of year for your business (Christmas ring any alarm bells for anyone?) or if you work for yourself and you’re heading off on holiday for a couple weeks and you don’t want your social media activity to dry up while you’re away.
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You can check out the pros and cons of using Hootsuite, Edgar and Buffer in my previous blog post here – 3 Social Media Scheduling Tools to Save You Time.
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3. Not replying to comments

Have you ever asked someone a question and they haven’t replied?

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Or maybe you’ve taken the time to make a comment on a blog post or a social media update and you’ve not received any sort of acknowledgement or reply?

Annoying, isn’t it?

The truth is people don’t like to be ignored.

If someone takes the time to ask you a question or comment on one of your social media updates, be sure to get back to them as soon as you can.
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Not only is it the polite thing to do, but it will help you build a stronger relationship with that person.

Social media is all about engagement and building relationships.
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It’s also very important for your brand image and reputation as it will help you be seen as a company who cares about their social media followers and interacts with them.
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4. Just trying to sell, sell, sell!

If you just share posts about how wonderful your company is and try to sell to people all the time your followers will soon get bored of you and stop following you.

Instead, aim to educate and entertain your followers with your knowledge and experience. Delight them.

Link to your blog posts. Give them snippets of information that will help them. Useful tips.

What sort of information would you like someone to share with you if you were following their social media account?

Also, remember to share content posted by others, which might be of interest to your audience.

I always think a good rule of thumb to follow when you are active on social media is the 80/20 Rule – make 80% of your posts your own content and 20% content you’ve shared from others.
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5. Not including visuals in your posts

If you’re not including visuals in your social media updates, now is definitely the time to start.

For example, according to SocialPilot "98% posts with images get higher comment rate" on LinkedIn.
 
But don’t just stop at images though.
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According to Twitter, videos are 6 times more likely to be retweeted than Tweets with photos and 3 times more likely to be retweeted than Tweets with GIFs.
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Need a hand with your social media?

I hope you've found this blog post useful.

If you'd like to speak to us about your social media (or any other aspect of your marketing) please go ahead and schedule a free consultation today.

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We're looking forward to helping you.