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Social media is the most important aspect of any business. Nowadays it is hard to find an enterprise not using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to promote its products or services, increasing its customer base. Competition transferred online in recent years. Many businesses use a public network to build their brand through customers’ engagement. Every post has some purpose and audience interaction becomes more important than ever.
When everything is done right, business expands, brand strengthens and communication with customers improves. As a result, a number of customers, ROI and publicity increase. Unfortunately, if something goes wrong, your reputation might be ruined, the clients start working with competitors and profits drop down.
With that in mind, here are the most common mistakes new business owners make and some advice to overcome them.
Small companies frequently have a limited budget. Consequently, they hire young people with no experience in SMM manager roles, believing interns will be successful. Unfortunately, such decisions lead to disaster in most cases. SMM market develops at the highest possible speed. Some new techniques and methods appear each month. In such a fast-moving environment, a young specialist with limited knowledge on the topic will not be successful. He has to compete with experienced professionals and in this tough game, he will definitely lose.
It’s crucial to hire a person who has a strong background in SMM and learns every day small companies do not have time for experiments. Your strategy should be strong and its implementation effective from the first post. In such a case, only a professional manager will bring business to the top.
Not committing to posting on a regular basis
Irregular posting is among the most common mistakes new business owners make. The algorithms do not show posts to each potential client. Not all customers see the content you post even if you do it consistently. But when companies forget about their SMM activities after several months of posting, the consequences might be devastating. In the best case, you are to start campaigns from the very beginning, losing the engagement. In the worst case, you will lose all your followers.
How to simplify your life and guarantee consistent posting? The answer is fairly simple. Just make a schedule and follow it. You can create a posting plan in Excel or other programs. Then each day you would have to consult the schedule, placing the right post at the right time. The drawback of such an approach is its dependence on the human factor. You might simply forget to look through the schedule one day. You might not have much time for posting or your SMM manager gets ill and this day your posts will not appear. Here, smart posting tool helping to automate your public network publishing becomes a perfect solution.
For example, you can use PromoRepublic social media platform. This popular tool conveniently coordinates all your publishing activities on a public network.
The more you post, the more engagement you receive. Finally, you make your life easier and effortlessly create smart content for your audience raising their engagement day by day.
Failing to place the metrics on your SMM campaigns
Many new businesses starting public network posting, do not analyze how their campaigns are performing. They do not understand which content forms to choose, which media platform works better and which channel raises engagement. Obviously, companies waste investment and are unable to improve campaign effectiveness.
Establishment of proper metrics within each post can definitely help to overcome this problem.
Some useful metrics include:
- Page likes – the number of people who liked your post. They can be paid, coming from Ads campaign or organic, coming naturally without advertisement
- Post reach – the number of people who have seen your post
- Engagement – unique people who shared, liked and commented on your post
The placement of metrics will not guarantee the immediate success of your campaigns. But this information will help you to reallocate the budget to more effective forms of content, including videos. You can also be sure that all the funds work in the way you want them to.
Not responding properly to negative feedback
Worst communication with the public network audience is to respond inappropriately to criticism. It is common practice when people do not like your services. They might share some negative experience with your company. Here, the important thing is to respond to these claims in a proper way. You cannot answer unprofessionally or rudely.
Your role as a brand ambassador is to protect your interests, being attentive to followers. You should show empathy to your clients’ and put substantial efforts to find the best solution to their problems even in a very complex situation.
Advertising too much
Each business finds public network as a promotion place and starts SMM campaigns to sell their products or services. Unfortunately, people are overwhelmed by an advertisement. It comes from every channel and many people avoid the hard sell. They look for valuable and engaging content.
The role of social media changes. You have to follow the simple 80/20 rule when only 20% of your publications focus on direct marketing. Do not sell products and services from the first contact with the audience. Remember 80% of your posts have to be really social. Try to communicate with your potential buyers, building a relationship with them. Only when you establish strong relationship try to introduce your products or services. Smart content is key to success in social media.
It is a common practice among small business owners to start their SMM campaigns at all platforms simultaneously. In most cases, you do not have time to post or fail to engage with followers through each social media channel. Remember that all accounts have to be active if you require audience interaction and want to build a strong relationship.
The solution is to investigate your customers as a first step. You have to verify which public networks they use and pick the most popular ones. In reality, one or two platforms are enough for a start. Develop and investigate one platform, building a strong relationship with followers. Gaining brand ambassadors on one site you can start working on a new one.
Public networks are an outstanding marketing instrument for small company owners. They help to develop strong customer relations, build brand awareness and raise ROI. You can compete with big companies, find your niche and speak directly to customers who can become your brand ambassadors.
Just remember that even small social media mistakes might ruin your reputation. Prepare thoroughly for each campaign, investigate your target audience and do not forget about the lessons you learned from common mistakes business owners make.
