5 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes Companies Make

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There are plenty of reasons an organization’s social presence may be coming up short – a stretched team, a small budget, or a lack of specialized social media expertise. Even with adequate resources, social media trends and platforms change with time (hello Meta!), but many guiding principles of social stay the same.

Here are five common mistakes companies make on social and how to fix them.

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

It’s easy to get excited and carried away when brainstorming what social platform your company should be on or how many posts you should publish. The latest and greatest platforms may be tempting to join, however it’s important to not just create a presence, but also to have a strategy for the platform and keep an active presence on the platform.

Who are you trying to reach? Where is your target audience? What do you want them to do? Look at the demographics of each social channel and see what matches up best with your audience.

No Planning / Working on the Fly

Folks often underestimate the time that social media content creation and implementation takes. Casual personal users may think it’s as easy as taking a photo and creating a jazzy caption to go along with it. But to do it right requires research and planning.

What is your audience interested in? Who will be part of your content team to identify activities or events that should be promoted on social (and take photos of all the fun to be posted!)? Social media is not a one-man-band – it’s important to build an extended team to help you fill your content schedule.

Lack of Consistency

We get it. When the to-do list gets full, it’s easy for social media to take a backseat to other deadline-oriented projects. There are plenty of dormant company ghosts out there in the social media world – don’t let your company become one!

If you know there is a busy time coming up, working ahead and scheduling posts can help save you the stress of remembering to post on top of juggling other priorities. Meta now offers easy scheduling for both Facebook and Instagram directly on the platform. There are many other tools available that make social planning and scheduling easy.

One-Size-Fits-All Graphics

It’s tempting to use the image file from the brochure, the save the date card or the poster you already created and share it on social. But, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Social media graphics should be sized properly for the channel you are using. This ensures the graphic will look clean and attractive in your followers’ feeds and stories. We’re fans of the free-to-use online graphic design tool Canva. It’s straightforward and easy to use, for graphic design experts and design amateurs alike. Paid accounts even offer the ability to resize your graphics! 

When developing graphics for social media, it’s important to keep in mind followers are most likely viewing your content on a mobile device. Smartphone usage makes up 80% of social media browsing, with 95.1% of Facebook users and 86% of Twitter users accessing the platforms on mobile. Make sure the font size in your images is large enough to easily view on small screens!

A Purely Organic Approach

There was a time when Business Pages on Facebook reached most of the followers that “Liked” their page. Unfortunately, those times are long behind us. While it’s still important to encourage folks to follow your page, it’s no longer as simple as putting up a post and expecting them to see it.

Mixing paid posts (like Boosts on Facebook) into your content strategy can help make sure you’re reaching not only current followers but also people who live in the same area or interact with the same kinds of content. Even spending $25 or $50 a month can dramatically increase the number of people who see your posts.

Need Help? We’re Here.

It takes a serious commitment of time, effort and resources to have a successful social media program. Fortunately, you don’t have to go at it alone.

From planning to strategy to execution, our team has the digital marketing expertise and experience to give your brand’s social media presence a lift. Let’s talk.

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