3 Big Mistakes in Social Media Marketing

1. Forgetting a Strategy

You’ve heard it said: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Without a solid strategy in place, there’s not much chance for success. A simple strategy for social media marketing goes a long way. The strategy should include:

• How many times a week (or day) you will update your accounts
• How many friends or followers you want
• A realistic goal for conversions

2. Forgetting About Others

No one likes reckless self-promotion on Twitter and Facebook. If the only thing you do with your accounts is promote yourself, you will lose followers quickly (especially on Twitter, where many followers are not your “real life” friends). Facebook may be more forgiving, but not by much. Limit self-promotional posts to twice per week, and divide the remainder of your content between engaging updates free from links, sharing relevant links your readers will enjoy and (polite and friendly) replies to other users. That way, you get more friends and followers who actually like you – not just “like” you.

3. Forgetting to Update

This is perhaps the worst offender of all, because it amounts to doing absolutely nothing. Even if you are making mistakes on social media, at least you’re doing something, and can learn as you go along. In order for your social media marketing to mean something, you need to update your accounts daily, if possible. Depending on your type of business or how fast your audience is growing, posting more than once per day or even hourly may be warranted. A good social media manager can help you decide on a good strategy for the frequency of your updates.

Those are three social media marketing mistakes no one wants to make. Can you think of any others? Let us know in the comments below!