Social media has become one person you feel to be your best companion in a place filled with people you don’t know at all. Earlier social media was used mostly by the age group of 18 to 30 but with the emergence of the updates in social media it has gained huge attention.
Social media is currently being used by every age group. Now the favorite pastime of most people is to scroll feeds of social media platforms. Even the news which was earlier spread with the help of newspapers or news channels are now being spread through social media.
Social media being extremely popular has hammered a lot of productive time as well. But if used wisely social media is a great way to market products and services.
Big companies have started shifting their marketing strategies from google marketing to social media marketing. But is this a clever step? Well, we will answer this question in our next blog so stay connected.
One important question related to social media marketing is whether it can be done by anyone? If yes, why are companies hiring social media marketing experts and paying them huge amounts?
Social media marketing is not limited to posting stuff and running ads; it is much bigger than that. And thus, doing social media marketing without expertise could make you spend a lot of money and effort and generate zero revenue.
The Most Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes
- No Planning
Planning is crucial in every aspect. Even if you are building a house or you are choosing a career. Even when you think of buying stuff you have to move with a plan.
Hence social media marketing also needs a plan. You have to understand several things like:
- What is your goal?
- What are your resources?
- Who is your target audience?
- What is your budget?
- How are you going to measure the results?
As I said earlier, social media is not just posting anything and everything. If you wish to generate revenue from social media you have to plan and make your move.
Have you heard about the 2013 social media marketing campaign of Mercedes Benz?
Mercedes in 2013 hired five top Instagram photographers since at that time their target audience was the young generation. These photographers were then asked to each take the wheel of a new Mercedes CLA. And the one which gained maximum likes got to keep the car.
The campaign turned out to be a huge success and it was seen as:
- Mercedes received 87,000,000 organic Instagram impressions
- Their Instagram likes reached 2,000,000
- They got 150 new marketing assets (stunning photos)
So, what are the things you learnt from this campaign? Something which I learnt was before running a campaign ask yourself these important questions:
- Can you organize such a competition that gets people trying out your product first?
- Analyze your target audience. What is the price they would value?
- Recruiting bloggers/influencers via social media and getting them to blog about your service or product can be a smart move. Whoever receives the most engagement wins.
Hence, before executing any social media activity try making a plan and work accordingly. This will make sure that even if it won’t turn out to be successful you will not be left with just losses.
- No Tracking
Why do social media marketing tools come with tracking options? For example, why do people use Facebook pixels?
There are millions of ads running over social media but how many of them are being tracked? Running an Ad without tracking the results is just a waste of money. In Fact, doing any type of social media activity without tracking the results is of no use.
Tracking brings you the following benefits:
- Tracking helps you know whether the activity you are doing is beneficial or not.
- It helps you know if the goal you targeted is being achieved or not.
- It helps you in planning future activities.
- It helps you know whether the cost you incurred is generating the revenue you estimated.
- It lets you know who your potential customers are.
- It helps you know the exact place your audience is coming from.
Many marketers make the mistake of not tracking the activity they are doing and this makes them end up with huge losses.
- Considering All Social Media Platforms Similar
This is again a huge mistake made by beginners in marketing. There are reasons people use a particular platform. And if this is the case how can a marketing plan for Instagram work for YouTube as well?
LinkedIn is a platform used by aspiring adults to search for jobs and by companies to hire people. What if you prepare a marketing strategy which involves displaying the clothes you sell? Is it ok to run an ad for this on LinkedIn? Of Course not.
Every platform has its predefined audience and to run a successful marketing campaign you have to keep in mind this small aspect.
When people are looking for some kind of tutorial or want to know something through a video, they will move to YouTube. When people want to just be more real and raw, they will use snapchat. Thus, try understanding the motive behind any particular platform and then make your strategy.
- Deleting Negative Comments
Social media has an amazing feature which allows your audience to provide a view over the things you served them with.
When people are given such rights, they start commenting and reacting to things as per their likes and dislikes. Hence you might receive positive as well as negative responses from your audience.
Most people have a tendency to either avoid negative comments, delete them or give a bad or disappointing reply. But is this the right way to deal with it?
It is said that your criticisms play the best role in your success. Thus, a good marketer will provide a positive reply to a negative comment. This will make others build trust in your brand.
This will also make you understand what your audience likes and what they dislike. And hence you can come up with a better social media strategy.