Ronn Torossian, the PR founder and professional guru, says that according to research, about eighty percent of companies currently find that social media marketing is a consistently effective tool in generating positive results for their brands. While there are many best practices companies use on social media platforms, and even more specific strategies within each platform, many companies are falling victim to common social media pitfalls that can be hard to identify and easy to fall into.
To generate the best possible social media results that reach the largest portion of your target audience possible, it’s important for companies to avoid making these mistakes.
Not Utilizing Live Streaming Capabilities
Streaming is currently one of the most powerful tools that companies have on major social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. In fact, live streaming provides companies one of the biggest returns on investment compared to any other content-sharing format.
Aside from creating short-form video content, live streaming is one of the best ways that companies can get a positive return on marketing dollars spent.
Additionally, ROI based on streaming content alone has been increasing in the last few months, helping to generate better all-around social performance over a longer period of time. This type of content sharing is a great way for companies to engage with their customers and get feedback in real-time. This instantaneous communication with clients is so important as it can help marketing teams to optimize all other types of media content before going out on their social channels.
Buying Followers
New, smaller companies that want to establish some sort of credibility on particular social platforms, or just want to generate more engagement for their current content might consider purchasing followers for their accounts. But, wait.
Today, purchasing followers is easier and cheaper than ever before. Companies can end up adding several hundreds or thousands of followers in a matter of moments. That can feel very fortifying.. However, there’s a huge catch to this strategy and a purchased following can wind up backfiring in the end.
Purchasing followers on social media platforms is similar to receiving a bad check. A brand decides to make the upfront investment for something that seems valuable when first received. But in the end, bought followers never deliver on the client’s real goals.
Usually bought followers are simply bot! followers that cannot organically engage with the business by liking, commenting, sharing, or promoting the business generally. Additionally, buying followers can also significantly change a band’s ability to gather real analytical data from social media platforms in order to focus and enhance strategies for upcoming content.
The ability to decipher what is working well in terms of social media strategy will automatically assist in shaping future social media content to cater more closely to the wants and needs of the real brand enthusiasts following you. An organic following might take a few weeks or months to truly build up, but those followers are the gift that keeps on giving and will help you grow faster when all is said and done.
Making Social Media Only About Promotion
Although a company should be promoting itself and its solutions on social media platforms, it shouldn’t feel that it must be a relentless stream of personal promotion with every single piece of content that it shares with its audiences. In fact, most customers want to see brand authenticity rather than a constant barrage of promotional materials.
If a company utilizes a social media platform simply to promote its solutions, the brand’s content will end up feeling very one note and monotonous . Instead, create content that speaks to the pain points and main needs of your audience. This will allow the more promotional content you post to act as the solution for your customer’s needs and create more of a sense of urgency and desire to engage and buy.
Not Engaging Your Audience
There is a moment as a brand grows your social media following when its audience begins to interact with the content created. Likes keep growing, but now the audience is having a real conversation in the comment sections. As is the way with most brands, the positive comments always come along with brand antagonists. Whether the comments are warranted or not, the last thing to do is just stay silent.
The comments section is the perfect place for a brand to further educate its audience. By continuing that conversation, it might help to solve customer pain points never encountered before or put to rest false information that might be spreading about specific products and services on the web. Engaging followers directly in the comments will set the record straight and show followers that the company is listening.
Also, a company should never erase a negative conversation had with a client publicly in a thread. Yes, everyone can read it,, but making it disappear is the most unauthentic action to take. Show audiences that there is nothing to hide and be objective when responding to negative comments.
If the person commenting highlights your wrongdoing, thank them for the advice and tell them how the brand is improving. If they’re just being toxic or picking a fight, ignore them. Followers are smart and will either see the toxic comments for exactly what they are or never see them in the first place because you chose not to engage.
Many platform algorithms will also promote brands and social posts that have more engagement within the comments. By helping the audience solve their issues in real-time, it will also promote posts and gain visibility for the brand on the social platform. It’s a win-win.
Ronn Torossian is a public relations executive.