Creating and maintaining an online presence is one of the best marketing tools for brands and individuals hoping to build a target audience.
Below are some of the most common mistakes that are made on social media and how to fix them to develop the success of a brand.
The voice/tone is inconsistent.
Keeping the tone of posts isn’t just important for one social media platform, but for all accounts you manage. The best social media users have a coherency that makes their brand recognizable across all accounts. If you have multiple people posting to the same accounts this is an extremely important topic to discuss when planning a message to put online. If you can tell that different personalities are posting to each platform, the tone will be off and the audience won’t understand what the brand itself represents.
How to fix it: If your managing accounts on your own, make sure you’re using the same tone across all social media platforms — someone should be able to recognize that it’s your account within the first few seconds of scrolling.
Imagery, verbiage and hashtags are a few tools that can help a brand decide the overall tone of its social media accounts.
Your audience doesn’t get a response.
Responding to your following is HUGE for overall social media success. If your audience doesn’t feel heard, they won’t connect with the message. Even when negative commentary is being made, sometime just giving it attention can help change their mind because everyone wants their opinion to be heard — Keep in mind there are limits to the type of negativity that can be addressed with a positive response.
How to fix it: Start talking to your audience! Tweet, comment and message anyone back if they respond to one of your posts! It’s important to engage in conversation with the people who are following you – they’re the people you are targeting with your content and they’ll be loyal if they know they can reach you.
You’re not using a clear-cut posting schedule.
Your posting frequency can make or break the engagement you receive on social media. Posting too little or too much at odd times can disengage the following you do have and prevent new people from joining in.
How to fix it: Set a plan for when you’re going to post what. Use analytics to measure what content is getting the most engagement and what times your audience is connecting to your posts. The below online scheduling tools are a great way to start. If you like writing things down like I do, use a planner specifically for your social media posts to stay organized.
Online schedulers:
Planners:
What practices do YOU find best when implementing strategic social media marketing? Comment below or tweet me at @AshleyDHarring.