5 Social Media Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Brand

If you spend any time researching social media online, you’ll find plenty of information about what you should be doing, but when it comes to what you shouldn’t do, there’s not much out there.

We address a few of those things here because it’s often these issues that can hamper your digital marketing success.

Let’s look at social media mistakes that are hurting your brand.

Mistake #1: Auto Posting Across Platforms

With social media scheduling tools readily available, many businesses will craft the same post and share it across all their platforms.

Yes, this is convenient, but because your audience is diverse, this isn’t the best tactic. Each social media platform has its own personality and best practices.

Your social media followers are on different platforms for different reasons. For example, if you want to share a blog post, Facebook is great. Because you can’t share links on Instagram posts, you’ll need to share something a little bit different.

Don’t be lazy. Get creative and craft posts for each individual platform. Consider the audience, best practices for length, imagery and video as you optimize for each platform.

Mistake #2: Having an Incomplete Profile

One of the easiest things you can do on social media is complete each platform in the way asked for. Yet, many business owners neglect to do this.

When people visit your social media platforms for the first time, they want to know a bit about you. Here’s your chance to craft a paragraph that makes you shine.

Be sure and fill them out completely to further engage your audience.

Mistake #3: Overusing Hashtags

Multiple hashtags belong on certain platforms and not on others. What’s more, there are best practices for the number of hashtags to use pending the platform.

Hashtags are rich tools that help people find your content, but if you overuse them, you look like an amateur. If you feel like all 30 of your Instagram hashtags apply, put them in a comment IMMEDIATELY after posting your content. However, before using hashtags, you may also want to research them. Make sure they fit your industry and aren’t inappropriate.

Here are some general guidelines for specific platforms:

• Twitter: Recommended number of hashtags: 1 – 2
• Instagram: Recommended number of hashtags: 15 – 30
• Facebook: Recommended number of hashtags: 1 – 2
• LinkedIn: Recommended number of hashtags: 1 – 2

Mistake #4: Ignoring Reviews and Comments

When people post on your platforms, whether it’s a comment or a review, you want to respond.

After all, social media is for being social, so you want to make sure you monitor each platform daily.

While it’s easy to respond to your positive reviews with a “thank you” and a brief note, it can be challenging to respond to the negative reviews, but you must.

It’s imperative that you respond to negative reviews. First, you want to respond to address the issue. Second, you want to respond for all the people who’ll see your review in the future.

When responding to negative reviews, take a step back, breathe, make sure you know the details of the situation, and then respond with empathy and understanding.

Mistake #5: Overpromotion

Social media isn’t the place to push your brand day after day. It’s not the place to air your specials on a regular basis either.

You want to mix up your social media posting while keeping 20% or less for self-promotion. The 80/20 rule says share engaging, valuable content 80% of the time and your own sales and promotions 20% of the time.

Final Thoughts

To avoid many of these blunders, it pays to know your audience. Who are they? What are their demographics? And, what are they looking for?

Once you know your audience, you can craft content for them that is engaging and relationship building.

In addition, make sure your brand has a consistent voice through all your digital media from your website to your email marketing and your social media platforms. This helps your target audience recognize you and remember you.

Finally, put together a social media strategy and content calendar. By doing this, you’ll avoid many of these blunders and succeed in your social media marketing.

Looking for some help with your social media strategy? We’d love to help. Get in touch with us today for a free quote.