What are the Social Media Mistakes Companies Make That Can Weaken Engagement?

Given the hype around how a strong social media presence is a must-have for organisations hoping to find success these days, you might imagine that simply setting up a company profile on any social platform would be enough to attract consumers and then turn them into customers. However, the truth is that generating true engagement with online consumers takes a considerable amount of effort in addition to a thoughtful strategy.

Companies which have an established social media channels but aren’t seeing as much engagement as they had hoped for are able to look at different aspects of the content that they post in order to see what may be limiting its reach as well as effectiveness.

Over 90% of medium and large businesses utilised social media in their marketing for five years or longer. However, nearly half of marketers are not able to show the power of their social media investments. That’s why, regardless of what your social media strategy is, it’s constantly a good idea to go back and ensure you have the basics covered. Your organisation may find that it needs a strategic do-over.

Philip Kotler once said, “You should never enter into battle before you’ve won the war on piece of paper.” However, countless businesses have done just that with social media.

Even though 97% of Fortune 500 corporations are on LinkedIn, 84% are on Facebook and a further 86% are on Twitter, many brands got into the social media front lines without a crystal clear strategy. Social was an add-on to plans already in existence — another outlet to deliver the marketing message. Later, marketers found themselves working backward in order to connect their social strategy to business strategy, as managers demanded greater proof of ROI.

Not Having A Social Media Policy

Companies who don’t provide guidelines for how their employees should behave themselves online are dealing with a ticking time bomb. Through creating expectations of how employees represent themselves online, both during work hours as well as after, brands not only assist with educating their staff on potential problems, but they also create a fallback when a person goes too far.

Not Understanding Your Audience’s Expectations

A common social media mistake is not taking the time to understand your audience and their expectations. Take the time to consider both primary and secondary data sources. Analyse what has historically outperformed in terms of engagement, and don’t be afraid to directly ask questions. Then you can start to understand if your audience wants to be informed, educated or entertained by you.

Handling All Social Media Sites As If They Are The Same

Each of the social media channels has its own language, customs as well as audience. So before you start utilising Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s very important to learn how people communicate and share on that specific network.

At the same time, many businesses blast exactly the same message across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn not realising that this practice comes across as fake, impersonal or spam-like. In order to avoid coming across as fake or like a banner ad, organisations should make the effort in order to understand how each individual platform works and then tailor their messages and content to be platform specific.

Not Speaking To Specific Pain Points And Needs

You may need to take a step back and then consider the specific pain points as well as the needs of your audience. In order to build engagement, your content must be ridiculously helpful, drive conversation and speak to the specific needs that your audience has top of mind every day.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Eager to become a social media marketing expert? If you do, then you need to do our Social Media Marketing Course. Follow this link to find out more.