Thus, the immense benefits and development opportunities that social media channels have to offer have given companies no other choice but to embrace it, and integrate it as a vital marketing and business tool.
While social media channels do offer massive benefits to businesses, it can backfire on your business if not done appropriately. Social media has grown at such a rapid speed that marketers and strategists did not get enough time to understand its dynamics and operations.
Furthermore the legions of social media applications bewilders them (marketers), making it a daunting task to choose the most fitting social media tool. In fact, based on social media examiner’s report from last year, out of 97% marketers participating in social media marketing, around 85% of them aren’t sure of which social media tool is best suitable for their business.
Thus, rather than triggering business growth, it results into your customers being left frustrated with your brand generally, and the social media blunders made by you specifically.
The Top Most Common Social Media Mistakes that Businesses Make
Social media is extremely overwhelming. No matter if you are running a successful, well-established operation or have just kick started your business recently – you are likely to stumble at some point and make some very common, yet terribly silly mistakes. While these mistakes may be silly, they have the potential to make your customers hate you and ultimately destroy your business. After all, it is estimated that it takes 12 positive experiences for the customers to get over one negative experience.
Therefore, it is highly important that companies realize the blunders that they are making on their social media accounts, which are making them lose out on existing, as well as prospective customers.
However, it is not easy to decipher if the customers are getting frustrated by your tactics and are hating your brand, thereby resulting into failed social media strategies. While you may use website traffic and other numerical tools to see if your social media campaign is working, it may be somewhat misleading. You need to incorporate more subjective measures in order to understand if customers are indeed hating your social media campaign. Here are some signs to clue you in if your social media strategy is making your brand highly unpopular among the customers.
Do you see a drop in your followers and likes on your social media page?
Are there less and less customers interacting with you on your social media account?
You experience an unexpected and sudden drop in the ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ or ‘shares’ you get on your posts?
Are the customer complaints on your social media page going unanswered and unresolved?
The content you post is generating little to no engagement from your customers?
If the answer to the above questions is in affirmative, it is clear that something is indeed wrong with your social media strategy which in turn is making you lose out on your customers. Having discerned this, it is time that you unearth the blunders or the mistakes that you are making on your social media. Following are some of the most common social media mistakes that you need to avoid entirely, or at the very least, steer clear of.
Flooding your audience’s timeline with too many posts
Your customers are not going to appreciate if you flood their timelines with too many posts. Some companies are terribly mistaken as they think that by spamming their customers timeline they will acquire the social media exposure which in turn will increase their market share. What they don’t fathom is that too much posting will get you in their bad books. No matter how good your post is, overdosing of posts is the perfect recipe to be unfollowed by your customers. Posting no more than twice a day is ideal.
Posting content that is lengthy and not interesting
Already everyone’s lives are busy today. People try to multitask by squeezing as much work as they can do at one time. In such a case, if you post content on your blogs that is extremely lengthy and never ending, customers are bound to stop reading it before even finishing.
Furthermore, posting content is not enough. If your posts and content are boring and don’t add value to customers, they are likely to ensure that they never read any of your future posts and eventually unsubscribe your page.
Posting self-promoting content all the time
Though it is partially true that company’s primary goal is self-promotion through social media, too much self-promotion on your part seems to look like you are desperate for your audience to buy from your company. If not that, self-promoting content like, ‘our company can do this and that’ makes you appear arrogant. While customers do love brands that are self-assured, somehow they don’t think too highly of braggarts. Thus, it is important to show subtlety when you are running promotional posts and contents if you don’t want your customers running away from you.
Not updating your account frequently
Many brands tend to forget that they ever created a social media page. They might share a post once in awhile but then they never follow up on that post in order to keep themselves updated on what are the customers opinions and perceptions regarding the content you post. Furthermore, not updating your social media pages regarding upcoming products or new collection is also a huge turn off for your customers.
Having an outdated account and profile
If you do not have an up-to-date social media account and profile, you need to fix it – pronto. Many brands and companies tend to ignore their social media profile pages. They don’t realize that your company profile is among the first things that your prospective customers are likely to notice on social media. An incomplete profile, with a lacking bio, a picture from a million years ago and a phone number which is disconnected now will not gain you any points from the customers, rather it will frustrate your customers as you don’t appear accessible to them.
Not responding to customer queries quickly
This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons as to why your customers end up hating your brand. Since, nearly all of the social media channels have an option of sending direct messages or commenting on posts, customer expectations with respect to instant and rapid response has increased. Around 32% of the customers expect a reply within 30 minutes on social media. But, companies still tend to generate a slower response which makes your followers feel neglected.
Ignoring negative feedback and customer complaints
The worst thing that you could do to your customers is ignoring their complaints or any other negative feedback. Especially on social media, choosing to ignore negative comments and not addressing them in any capacity is likely to result into a severe backlash from your customers. Companies tend to think that by not addressing the negative feedback, they have successfully made it to go away. This is not how it works though. Unresolved complaints tend to find their way and come back to haunt you in the form of perhaps, a public bashing spree – as per the saying, ‘what goes around, comes around’.
Keeping your response too stiff and corporate-esque
Communicating on social media is not like releasing a press release. Since you are directly interacting with your customers, your response doesn’t need to be too formal. Customers like brands who are friendly, real and authentic. However, many brands today still don’t understand the importance of coming up with a personal response for their customers. As a result, customers think that you lack empathy and common courtesy. No one wants to do business with a person who appears too high-handed, do they?
How to Avoid the Common Social Media Mistakes
As mentioned earlier in the article, it is easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to come up with strategies for your social media campaign. If not handled rightly, your customers end up hating you and your brand. If you find your company making any of the above mistakes, it is time that you reevaluate your strategy.
Here are some of the ways that will help you avoid making these silly social media mistakes and ensure that your customers keep loving and supporting your brand.
Improve your content quality to make it appear interesting for your customers by:
Keeping it short and to the point.
Including visuals, infographics, and attractive designs.
Incorporating satire and humor. This ensure that your customers keep reading it.
Integrating gifs, short videos and memes with your content to make it appealing.
Making sure that your content is useful for your target audience and adds value for them.
Connect with your audience and build relationships:
Interact and engage with your customers.
Personalize your responses in order to humanize your brand.
Follow up on your posts to get the idea regarding customers thoughts and feelings on the content you share.
Address and respond to all kinds of feedback:
Respond to customer complaints and resolve them as soon as possible.
Sincerely apologize to your customers in event of bad experience. This will earn you their respect.
Listen to what customers have to say about your latest products in order to make them feel valuable.
Share positive comments by customers as they act as testimonials.
Work out the optimal posting time:
Post content when your audience is more likely to login to their social media accounts.
An optimal amount of two posts a day is ideal.
Focus on issues other than talking about yourself all the time:
Share a story on how your brand came into being and encourage customers to share their own stories.
Talk about changes in the industry.
Narrate a particularly funny anecdote.
Comment on new movie releases or even a sensational football game.
PS: Just talk about something other than bragging about your brand every now and then.
Customers are central to businesses. Thus, making sure that your social media strategies are appreciated and liked by them is extremely vital. After all, your social media mistakes have the potential to make you lose out on your existing, as well as potential customers.
We also understand that it may be difficult for you to handle all this – after all you are an entrepreneur not a social media expert. However, no need to worry because we are experts in this field. Get in touch with us today to discuss more about social media management.
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