Social media marketing when done well, can have a tremendous impact on your business. In fact, 78% of consumers are willing to purchase from a company after having a positive experience with them on social, according to SproutSocial.
However, the majority of companies do social media marketing wrong. When implementing your strategy you will want to avoid these common issues with your social media plan.
Missing Strategy
The biggest issue we see in social media marketing is lacking a strategy. With any kind of marketing, there has to be a reason for what you are doing.
Most often the reason is to get more business of course, but it could be increasing website traffic, increasing brand awareness, or having another layer of client support/retention.
Take a minute to think about your social media strategy. In the next section, we will cover how to know you are getting there, but think deeply about what you want for your business.
How To Have An Effective Social Media Strategy
When brainstorming your perfect social media strategy think how this is going to apply to your business.
As an example, a home inspection company might have a strategy to retain their real estate referrals and gain impression share with new agents.
In another example, a pest control company may want to use social media to showcase how effective their services/products are, share their successes with their local communities, and help retain their current customers.
Use a piece of paper and pen and start writing down why social media is important for your business and how you could leverage the platforms to your advantage.
Missing Key Performance Indicators
How are you tracking performance of your social media plan? And do you have a scheduled time to review the analytics to ensure your strategy is being carried out?
Consider setting a weekly time with your team to review the social media key performance indicators. This could be for 10-15 minutes, or you could just send a report out. Then, schedule time monthly to review the progression.
In the end, you are running a business and if your social media strategy isn’t working for you, you are wasting time and money.
How To Find & Measure KPI’s
After coming up with your social media strategy, start brainstorming a list of measurable items so you know your strategy is effective.
To illustrate, this could be Instagram followers trend or, total engagement by platform. You could also consider link clicks and profile interactions. Just be sure you check with the platform you are on to see what data is available to you. Sometimes, you really have to know the platform in order to extract the right data, or you have to setup conversion tracking.
Missing Platforms
Next to last, we have missing platforms. This is another critical pillar of your social media plan that companies miss out on.
Whenever you are on social media, you should be on wherever your customers are on and DO NOT make assumptions. Early on in my career I made this mistake. Luckily, I was able to find it and learn from it, but if I knew better I would have saved A TON of time.
How To Find What Social Media Platforms You Should Be On
To find what social media platforms your company should focus on, just ask! If you are afraid of asking, think of ideal customer. Find ten-ish examples of your ideal customer, then find out what social media platforms they are most active on. It’s that easy!
In the case of my home inspection company I talked about before, you might review your top 10 real estate agents. Look them up on all the social media platforms and find where they post the most often!
Lacking Engagement
Lastly, we have forgetting to engage altogether. Most businesses think they just have to post on social media, but that’s not all!
You need to actively be on social. You need to like stuff, you need to comment, and you need to share things. The cool thing is when you engage with others, you pop up notifications on those people you are engaging with! Talk about brand impressions!
How To Get Better Engagement
To get better engagement schedule time in your day to do engagement, every day. Then, follow these steps:
- Find your ideal customer.
- Follow them.
- Interact with them through likes/comments.
- Rinse and repeat!
As you do it more and more, you find awesome tactics to find your ideal customers faster and faster. A great way to start is by looking at your competitors.
Final Thoughts
At WolfPack Advising, we help businesses scale their social media marketing. With every client we work with, we ensure your strategy is clear, we have performance metrics, we are on the right platforms for you, and engagement is high.
Avoid these common issues with social media plans and you will be well on your way to an effective social media strategy.
