Call it a boon or a bane, social media has taken hold of an average consumer, and it’s likely to stay the same for years to come. The novel coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown witnessed a boom in social media usage in the UK. According to the Digital 2021 report, there are a whopping 4.2 billion social media users globally, which is 53.6 percent of the total population.
This opened a new avenue for small businesses that were struggling to make ends meet. Many took the digital-first approach and catered to their clientele online. An analysis by Visa revealed that during 2020, one in four online purchases in the UK came from a social media platform.
Social media marketing should be the most important brand priority in the current situation. It makes absolute sense to hire services of a social media agency, but before you pull the trigger, here are the top social media no-nos that you must be aware of.
Blindly Posting Content
Most small brands take it upon themselves to create a social media page and then blindly start posting their products and services. While the idea is correct, the execution is not. For your social media presence to be fruitful, you must have a solid and effective social media marketing plan in place.
Consider hiring a social media content agency to help you draw up a list of objectives that you want to achieve by going social. The agency will then assist you in setting up a budget and a reasonable course of action based on their skills and experience in this field.
Once you have laid down what you want to achieve from your social media presence, it will be easier for you to track your results and decide how much more effort or resources are required.
One of the most popular social media campaigns in the UK was Hafod Hardware’s Be a kid this Christmas campaign was created for just £100. This small budget viral YouTube campaign won the heart of many just by being relatable.
This particular campaign is a glorious example of what a well-thought-out marketing plan can do for your brand. An effective marketing campaign is the one that resonates the most with the audience. This brings us to our next social media no-no.
Shooting Arrows in the Dark
In January 2021, 77.9 percent of the UK’s population were active social media users, according to the same Hootsuite Digital 2021 report mentioned before. It’s evident that of the millions of people active on social media, not everyone will take a liking to your brand. This is why it’s very crucial to decide who your target audience is.
Once you have decided on your target audience, it will get easier to concentrate your social media marketing plan on those who will resonate with your brand. Without this, you will never achieve the desired outcome; no matter how hard you may work.
The Hafod Hardware’s Be a kid this Christmas campaign mentioned before was successful because it resonated with their audience and forced them to stop and think. That’s the effect a curated marketing plan directed towards the niche audience has.
Omitting the Human Element
The next biggest blunder that a brand can commit is eliminating the human element from their social media presence. There are tools available now for social media platforms, which lets users set automated responses to DMs and comments on the posts. While they might be convenient and save you the effort required to engage with hundreds of interactions that happen over a day, they are not ideal.
Without the human touch, your audience will soon grow out of your brand and may lose interest. This will, in turn, affect your social media engagement, which is more damaging than having no social media presence at all. Because a brand with zero engagement or user interest will be looked upon as a lackluster entity, which is not a reputation you want to associate yourself with.
You would want your audience to comment or share your content, which will make your brand reach a broader audience. To achieve this, put out conversation-starting content regularly and engage personally with every response that comes in. Ensure that these conversations are favorable so that your audience feels good about being on your page.
Ignoring Insights and Analytics
Everything you did so far leads up to this point. Whatever you are posting on your social media, however good or engaging they must be, it’s all moot if they are not in line with the algorithm. Your post will not reach a wider audience and will be limited to those who already follow you.
This is not something you should slide. With social media, your goal should always be to reach a wider audience and grow. Only then will your business thrive and benefit from the social media marketing plan you put together.
While most social media platforms have their own analytics tool, some third-party platforms offer you more insights. Some of these offer everything that stock analytics does, and then some like competitor analysis. With these tools, you can find out what’s working and what’s not for a contemporary and learn from it.
Additionally, your analytics will give you insights into engagement, conversions, reach, and buying trends, which will help create a target marketing plan to improve the social media following.
These are the top social media missteps that a small business should be aware of before taking a deep dive into the vast world of social media. Any of these social media blunders have the potential to get you negative publicity, which is not what you want for your business.