The Worst Social Media Mistakes Brands Make (and How to Fix Them)
Social media has opened up new avenues for brands to engage with customers and promote their products and services. Unfortunately, even the big players experience social media disasters. And some of these take place due to minor mistakes. Continue reading to get tips on preventing your brand from committing blunders on social media.
7 Social Media Mistakes Brands Make
- Not tailoring content to each platform
- Being inactive on social media
- Not optimizing posts for mobile
- Neglecting to check back with your customers
- Lacking SEO
- Not using hashtags
- Using the wrong tone of voice
Not Tailoring Content to Each Platform
It’s tempting to repurpose your content across many platforms, especially if you’re short on time or resources. But if you want your social media marketing efforts to be successful, you must ensure that each piece of content is tailored for each platform.
For example:
- Instagram users expect high-quality photos and videos, not text.
- Facebook users like longer posts with more information.
- “X” users prefer shorter messages that are easy to read while scrolling through their feeds at a glance.
If you don’t tailor your content for each platform, you could make your brand name look unprofessional and spammy because people won’t take you seriously.
Being Inactive on Social Media
This is one of the biggest reasons people don’t engage with brands on social media. Brands must be active on various platforms like Facebook, “X”, and Instagram to keep their followers well-informed and connected to the brand. The more active you are, the more likely your followers will engage with you and share your content with their friends and colleagues.
There are many ways to increase the frequency of your posts and keep up a steady stream of content for your audience, including using tools like Hootsuite to schedule posts in advance. In response to someone mentioning your brand name on social media, you can automate a few tasks, such as sending automated responses. If you’re going to be away from your business for an extended period, consider having someone else manage your accounts while you’re gone so that people don’t think you’ve abandoned them.
Not Optimizing Posts for Mobile
The best way to make your content compelling is to make it timely and relevant. But you can’t do that if your content isn’t optimized for mobile. On a mobile device, users have less screen real estate and less time to read or watch a video. That’s why optimizing your posts for mobile platforms such as Facebook and Instagram is important.
To do this, you have to:
- Make sure all of your images are vertical instead of horizontal. Most people view their phones in portrait mode.
- Use short captions with a call-to-action at the end, so people know what they’re supposed to do after they read them, e.g., “Like” or “Comment.”
- Keep the text short and sweet. No one wants to scroll down through endless paragraphs.
Neglecting to Check Back With Your Customers
Social media is about staying in touch with your followers and fans, so why would you ever want to ignore them? If you don’t check back in for days or months, it can make you look disengaged and unresponsive, even if you’re doing well in customer service.
One of the best ways to keep tabs on what your customers are saying about your business is by checking out review sites like Yelp. Make sure that these reviews aren’t just positive ones from friends or family members who always have good things to say. Try getting a wide range of reviews from different people, even those with negative experiences.
Lacking SEO
Social media is a powerful marketing tool but is not a substitute for traditional marketing. Even if your brand name has a strong social presence, it’s not enough to just add posts and expect customers to come pouring in. You need to plan posts strategically and link back to your website and other pages within the site. Use keywords that people are likely to search for, and optimize for search engines so potential customers can find you when they’re looking for your offer.
Social media platforms have algorithms that determine what content gets seen by more people and what content gets buried in obscurity. If you want your business to be found online, you need to implement SEO techniques on your social media pages. Make sure you include relevant keywords in your posts and optimize them so they rank higher on Google’s search results page.
Not Using Hashtags
Hashtags are critical to any social media campaign because they help your post get noticed by more people. But if you misuse hashtags, it’s not just going to be ineffective. It could hurt your brand instead of helping it. For example, if you just throw random words into the middle of a tweet or post without any context behind them, then it will look like spam and not get any attention from anyone else on “X” or Facebook.
Instead, try using hashtags in a way that makes sense for your audience and helps them find related content that might also interest them. You can also add an extra hashtag at the end of each tweet so that people can easily search for other posts using that exact word or phrase to discover similar content.
Using the Wrong Tone of Voice
The biggest mistake brands make on social media is using the wrong tone of voice. There are many different audiences that brands need to reach and speak to, but they often don’t have the resources or time to talk to each group uniquely. This can lead to some brands defaulting to a generic, one-size-fits-all approach.
It’s important for brands to understand their target audience and then select an appropriate tone of voice for them. Your tone should be authentic and consistent with your brand identity, but it also needs to resonate with your audience.
Conclusion
Social media is a tool that can be used to great effect by brands, but it’s important to get a few key things right. Otherwise, you run the risk of damaging your brand image. As you can tell from the post, making mistakes isn’t always a bad thing. It can be a good way to learn from the experience and rectify the situation. Mistakes build character; they teach you what not to do. This is a proven case with Social Media too. Mistakes make us better if we are good learners. Use social media to your advantage and create a trailblazing persona for your brand.
