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7 Social Media Marketing #Fails You Can Avoid

Fai Masri   |   8 February 2021

Social Media Marketing Fails

Fun fact: Do you know that social media marketing has been around way before email marketing, SEO and Pay-Per-Click? (Remember Friendster or IRC, anyone?)

Yet, businesses today are still struggling to understand the concept of being social in social media. Whether they are surprisingly misinformed or not staying updated with the current developments, they end up wasting valuable resources. They fail to take advantage of what may just be the biggest revolution in communications since the printing press.

In all honesty, though, who could blame them. Presently, the social media landscape has evolved so much since its early years. If it is any consolation, even social media experts and marketing agencies can fall short in their promotional campaigns. And it is all fair game in social media marketing. Why? Because then, we wouldn’t have this list, of course.

Without further ado, here are 7 Social Media Marketing Fails we all can learn from.

1. No Focus.

While it is true that being in more places on social media can potentially mean more reach, many businesses overlook the fact that this will require more resources as well. Unless you are a big brand with a huge marketing budget, chances are, you won’t get the same results if you follow their strategy.

To get the most benefit with limited resources, your best bet is to focus on one or two channels. In any case, don’t try to be everything to everyone.

Moreover, many people use different platforms to do very different things. With that in mind, it is important to understand who uses what platforms and why. Use these findings to guide you in crafting relevant contents and promotions that is actually engaging to your prospects.

2. No Plan.

The last thing you want to do is to skip the first step you have to do. Not planning before launching your campaign is a sure-fire way to fail your social media marketing.

Before you start social media content creation and promotion, you need to know your objectives. Are you looking to create awareness for a new product? Or trying to get leads?

Although it may seem obvious, it’s amazing how many marketers ignore such an important step. Needless to say, consider your limitations before developing a plan that you and your team will follow. It is also a good practise to create specific goals to measure the success of your campaign.

3. No Consistency.

Can your prospect recognize your brand across the different social media platforms? If not, then you are guilty of making one of the 7 deadly sins when branding. When prospects on Facebook are exposed to your contents, they gets used to your logo, style of posts, and colour schemes. However, they will only recognize your brand on Twitter only if the Twitter campaigns maintain the same visual elements.

Technically, it is easier to use the same logos, background style, manner of expression, and colour schemes everywhere, so there is no need to complicate things by using different styles for each social media profile.

Remember folks, familiarity builds trust, and trust build brands.

4. No Added Value.

Social media marketing has evolved so much over the past decade. Gone are those days when all you need to do was to roll-out ads after ads and wait for a sale to happen.

These days, if you offer no other value aside from your product or service, your social media followings will likely disengage from your business. As a result, you risk getting your promotional campaigns being tuned out from your prospects and having them shun away from your brand the more you try to shove your message down their throat.

Many businesses forget that social media marketing is all about the consumer. Each post you share should be beneficial to them one way or another.

It is no surprise that the more successful campaigns are those that connect with their followers on a deeper level. People love brands that can make them laugh, solve their problems, encourage them to share, or comment with their experience with the brand.

Ultimately, stop trying to sell all the time. The sales will naturally come when you offer value.

5. No Human Touch.

Most marketers tend to forget that the main point of being in social media is to be social. Although some automation can help improve your online engagement, too much of it can have quite the opposite effect.

For instance, you can use automation to help schedule contents you have prepared beforehand to be shared at the right time across different social media platforms. Posting on precise times ensure that you get optimum organic reach from your followers. However, you can’t forget that you still need to read the comments and respond to them accordingly.

As such, it is best that all interactions with your followers are not scripted or automated.

6. No Visuals.

We all know that humans are very visual creatures. (More than 90% of all information to the brain is visual) Unfortunately, many businesses still do not understand its importance and practicality. Simply put, the brain can recognize and make sense of visual information faster than text.

You have to understand that when a social media user scrolls through their feed, they see thousands of images, videos, and infographics, all trying to get their attention. Time and again, it has been proven that textual status updates often get neglected, unless they have an attractive image accompanying them.

Therefore, it comes to no surprise that video contents are fast becoming the new norm. With some social media algorithms favouring videos to images, you should always try to integrate videos with your marketing campaign to optimize reach, whenever possible. Alternatively, you can create unique graphics that are relevant to the posts and the overall theme of your campaign. Else, you can always use Facebook’s new feature of adding coloured background to text.

7. No Commitment.

Many marketers argue that social media is dead. Then again, these are the same people who are guilty of committing some of the social media marketing fails mentioned in this list.

What you need to understand in social media is that it can be difficult to know when your campaign may suddenly gain immense traction. The last thing you want to do is to cancel your marketing efforts too quickly, only to see a competitor launch something six months later that turned out to be widely successful.

Above all, be patient with your content creation. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

That being said, you will need to learn how to commit. Social media marketing is no simple task. It is an entire process that requires dedication to reap its full benefits.

Initially, your new Instagram account may seem fun to maintain, but that activity has to stay consistent within 2 months, 2 years, or even 10 years after its creation.

However, that does not mean that social media have to consume your entire day.

That’s another marketing fail you should avoid. A rule of thumb is 30 minutes a day to cover the tasks related to this type of marketing. If you notice that you are consistently going above that limit, a simple alternative is to outsource to 3D Brand Agency.

Conclusion: 7 Social Media Marketing Fails to Avoid

In conclusion, if you recognized some of these 7 social media marketing fails, then you have some work to do. Ultimately, your success can only start by overcoming these mistakes. Once these issues are fixed, you can then move on to enhancing your strategy and testing out new campaigns.

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