It’s becoming a well-known fact nowadays that every business needs its social media. From increasing brand awareness and boosting sales to generating publicity and keeping customers engaged, social media is an incredible asset to any business in pretty much every industry!
Provided that you aren’t committing some huge mistakes.
Unfortunately, as much potential as social media has, it can also be a double-edged sword if you don’t utilize it the proper way. Fret not! Before you tear your business’s social media apart looking for errors to fix, you might first want to go through these five biggest offenders that should be avoided at all costs.
How these mistakes can affect your business
The truth is, certain tactics or strategies just simply don’t sit well with social media, especially when they’re used in a business setting. Besides potentially spoiling your reputation and even affecting your business’s sales and revenues, an incorrectly-used social media can soon prove to be a big liability for your business if not handled carefully.
1. Inviting friends and family to like your page (like, what?!)
At first glance, it’s not too hard to see why some people do this – more likes mean more sales, right? Wrong! Contrary to popular belief, likes on social media do not necessarily help you generate more sales, so think twice before inviting your beloved friends and family members.
The reason behind this is that doing so will hinder your page’s long-term performance by affecting your page’s algorithm. For example, if your business’s Facebook page is mainly fueled by likes from friends and family instead of your target audience, your posts will be directed to lesser people as Facebook will recognize that your posts are receiving lesser interaction. As a result, this will lead to lower engagement for your business, and that’s bad.
To avoid this, the best approach is to build up an audience the authentic way.
It might take some trial-and-error, but coming up with quality content is a surefire way to generate more shares for your business and reach your target audience better. If you’re short on ideas, here are some good ones that can get people interested in your business.
- Weekly inspirational quotes (do ensure they’re relevant to your products/services)
- Tutorial videos (e.g., how-to-use videos for products)
- Images depicting common problems faced by customers
- Photos of your business environment (e.g., your storefront, kitchen, office, etc.)
- Customer testimonials or reviews (bonus points for authentically screenshotted ones)
Remember, you want followers who are genuinely interested in your brand and can bring you sales. While having support from friends and family is always nice, authentic customers are what your business really needs.
2. Not replying to enquiries after a week
Unless you’re keen on turning down sales, it would be wise to reply to all the enquiries you receive in a timely manner. Nowadays, customers seldom have the patience to put up with slow customer service, so don’t leave your customers waiting too long for a response!
Here’s the thing, the Internet’s massive supply of information means that customers now have more than plenty of options to choose from for just about anything, including your business. If your customers feel ignored, it won’t take them more than a few days to forget you and look elsewhere, which means one slow or late response can be all it takes to lose you customers!
Understandably, not all businesses are able to tend to every customer at a moment’s notice, but a good general rule to follow is to respond to your customers within 24 hours. Whether it’s a simple query on Facebook or an email, do make it a point to leave no customer unanswered for long.
Bottom line: no one likes being ignored, especially not customers. Before they take their money elsewhere, try not to leave your customers on “Seen” if you can help it.
3. Having too much irrelevant content or lacking content
Although staying active on social media is always good, the content you put out (or lack thereof) matters the most here. As such, it would be much better to make sure that your latest content is relevant to your business before you post it (here are signs to watch out for!).
One common mistake that business owners easily make is creating social media postings that have nothing to do with their brand or brand voice.
Often, they might think that staying active is all it takes to keep customers engaged, but this is incorrect as irrelevant content will just give customers the bad impression that you are posting just for the sake of it.
To avoid this, look to keep your social media pages free of any content that your customers would not care about. Aside from notifications about your new page cover or profile picture, there should be no other posts that do not concern your business. Generally, these include:
- Non-related news articles
- Low-quality or inappropriate memes
- Uninspired or unoriginal posts irrelevant to your business (especially copycat ones)
- Unrelated guides or tips
As long as the content doesn’t help your business, it might be better to avoid it.
Remember, if people click into your page and have no idea what your business is about at first glance, they will likely leave without so much as a second thought. For this reason, having good content will help you immensely in attracting and retaining customers.
4. Excessive hard-selling
Naturally, the end goal of many businesses is to make a sale. However, it is very important to draw a line when it comes to this – no customer enjoys an overly hard-selling business. If you value your customers, you should definitely avoid excessive hard-selling whenever possible.
In modern times, hard-selling just simply isn’t as effective in getting customers. Even so, there are still brands out there that aggressively plaster social media with their posters, prices, and text in all caps to get customers to buy their products. You might be familiar with these:
- “BUY NOW!”
- “LIMITED TIME PROMOTION!”
- “SPECIAL PRICE AND OFFER!”
- “GET YOURS NOW!”
While their call-to-actions might be direct, they don’t convince customers nor really give them a good reason to actually buy their products. Instead of doing this, go for soft-selling instead! This method utilizes indirect ways to get customers interested in buying your stuff, and can be quite effective thanks to its subtlety.
Don’t forget, not all customers are the same. Hard-selling might work for some, but other times it might just push your potential customers away.
5. Running paid ads without a plan or strategy
To this day, advertising still runs as strong as ever, and it has also become easier for everyone to get into it. With the number of resources available everywhere, everyone can learn online and attend half-day courses to start running ads. But just how effective will their ads be without proper planning?
Although having paid advertising can definitely bring results, the most crucial part is having a comprehensive plan or strategy to run them. Without it, running paid ads is more or less equivalent to throwing your budget out the window. After all, effective advertising has to:
- Promote your product or service
- Reach the right customers and persuade them to buy it
- Deliver in a way consistent with your brand
With all that being said, repetition is a huge factor that will affect a customer’s decision in making a purchase.
A well-known rule for this is the “Rule of 7”, which says that a potential customer will need to see or hear your brand’s message at least seven times before they will buy from you. As repetition leads customers to remember you better, this is where remarketing ads come into play as they will target customers who have previously checked out your business, upping the chances of them making a purchase this time.
Just like any marketing campaign, it would be wise to have the same amount of strategy and tactics to truly make your paid ads shine.
All in all, a good, properly functioning social media is essential to just about any business.
Since it acts as your business’s online frontier on the digital space, proper planning should be taken for the best results. It’s more than just a platform for your business to express itself – it’s a tool to help you bring in more customers.
As social media has many intricate nuances to navigate for it to be useful for your business, it doesn’t hurt to get some professional assistance to help you out!
From researching your target markets, campaign planning, and crafting strategies to helping your page gain traffic and running effective ads, Artisense has the necessary expertise and skillset to help you leverage all the advantages that social media can afford you!
Don’t wait around now, time waits for no man, and neither does social media. Get your business’s social media smooth-sailing today with us.
