24 Jun 8 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes We Still See Brands Make

Social media has been a part of our lives for over 20 years. While the networks are constantly changing and new features rolling out, we’re still seeing brands make social media marketing mistakes that are easily avoidable.

Our agency has over 14 years of experience managing pages for some of the world’s leading brands, and it’s our job to help them avoid these all too common mistakes that could derail your strategy, or worse, cost you valuable customers.

Publishing Too Much Content

You don’t need to publish every single day (or multiple times a day) on every single social channel. Average organic reach rates on networks are so low that you’re likely wasting your resources by publishing such a high volume of content. Instead, focus on primary channels, determine a lower posting frequency, and have staff reallocate those resources towards more meaningful engagement and interaction with your existing audience on the network.

Focusing on Follower Count

This mistake is two-fold. Not only is the size of your social media following not that important, but the size of an influencers following is also something you shouldn’t be putting too much emphasis on. Again, organic reach rates are low across all of the major social media networks, which is why a meaningful paid media strategy is essential for reaching target audiences.

Running Ads Without Monitoring Inventory

One good way to leave a bad taste in the mouth of your target audience is to run ads of out-of-stock items. Not only is the consumer going to be frustrated that they can’t purchase the product that was advertised to them, but you may also end up with an ad filled with negative comments from disgruntled customers, deterring other potential customers from viewing your products. Luckily the solution here is rather simple; update your ads based on inventory. When something is no longer available, take down the ad, or edit the creative to remove a specific out-of-stock product.

Ignoring Comments

While it’s not expected that a brand engages with every single comment on their channels, customer service questions and comments should always be addressed. Forrester predicts digital customer service interactions will increase by 40% in 2021, so make sure your social media team is equipped with an escalation plan for the different types of inquiries that arise. And if your brand has an abnormally high volume of customer service comments, you may want to consider developing a dedicated handle for social media customer support.

Not Optimizing Content For the Channel

Publishing the same post to multiple channels is a common practice, but the main mistake brands tend to make is not optimizing either the creative or the copy for the different channels you’re publishing to. Each channel has different specs to follow, character count limitations, tagging restrictions, etc. Give your social teams the time they need to optimize posts for each channel.

Improper Tone of Voice

Don’t be afraid to let loose a little on social media and relax your brand’s tone of voice. In fact, try to have a little fun with it! It humanizes your brand to have a little fun, joke, use emojis, etc. – even if your brand is typically more buttoned-up other places. People like seeing brands be more relatable and real in an authentic way. Developing a social tone of voice from your larger brand tone of voice is a good step to help with this. 

Repetitive Imagery

Social media is an increasingly visual medium and brands should work to avoid using the same image in several posts on the same channel if possible. When users see the same image in the feed, they often assume they’ve already seen the post and will skip over the text. It also gives your brand page a low-quality feeling, which all brands should work to avoid. This may require a larger investment in imagery, but it’s certainly worth it.

Over or Under Compensating Influencers

One of the biggest marketing mistakes we see in the influencer industry is offering too much, or too little, to influencers for their work. Often times this mistake is made by in-house teams who don’t fully understand how the influencer world works and thus overpay influencers (causing inflated rates) or offer too little/free product and offend the influencer at hand. It may benefit your brand to outsource some, if not all, of the influencer management to an expert influencer marketing agency.

If your brand is an offender of one of the social media marketing mistakes above and unsure how to resolve the situation, contact us. We’d love to help strategize a solution specifically for your business.

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