Six Social Media Habits You Must Avoid As A Business
Favour Onyeoziri
By now we all know that Social Media is no longer just a place where people go to pass time. It has grown to become a powerful tool also for the growth of businesses. While joining the social media bandwagon may be good for your business, there are important dos and don’ts that you must observe if you want to succeed at using social media to grow your brand. This article will be addressing a number of don’ts or better still, things you should avoid as a brand on social media.
First is lack of a social media strategy or plan. It is commonplace for small business owners to just dive into social media and start putting out content at random. They do not have a clear cut idea of what exactly they hope to achieve, they just want to make more sales. However, you need more than a mental idea of what you want to achieve with your social media platforms, you need a clear, written strategy and plan. Your strategy should answer the following:
– Why is this business on social media?
– What do I hope to achieve on social media?
– Who are my target audience?
– What kind of content does my target audience love?
– What is the frequency with which I’d share posts on social media?
– What kind of posts would I be sharing?
– How do I get/create these contents, will I be doing it myself or outsourcing them?
Answering these questions will help define what your presence on social media will be. Also, it will help you create and maintain a uniform brand identity while guiding your content to make sure it is always relevant both to your business and your target audience.
Second is poor content. Poor content does not necessarily mean that the content is bad. It could be that the presentation is poor, the message is not appealing to your audience or not related to your business. A good example would be a furniture store sharing a joke from an Instagram Comedian that is totally unrelated to furniture. While creating content for your social media platforms, you must ensure that the content is clear and practical. Always ensure that your graphics designs are not blurred, also avoid typographical and spelling errors. Use relevant pictures to drive home your message. You also need to understand when to use videos, GIFs or photos to communicate your message. I will advise that you have a mixture of content from the three categories I just mentioned. Also note that your content must always offer value to your audience, it should either be educating, entertaining or a mixture of both. It is better not to share at all than to share a content that offers no value to your audience.
Third is inconsistency in sharing content. Consistency is very important towards achieving success on Social Media. If you have decided in your Social Media Strategy to post once, twice or multiple times a day, be consistent with that. If you also decide to put out content two to three times a week, follow the schedule strictly. This is because over time, your loyal audience will notice the pattern and begin to subconsciously expect to see a new post from you and when they don’t, they get the impression that you are unreliable and inconsistent. This is bad for business. If you must be on social media, then be present and active.
Fourth is sharing the same content across all platforms. Every social media platform has a way it works and the type of content that works best on the platform. Sharing the exact same content on multiple platforms is not advisable. While most Social Media platforms allow you to incorporate both plain text and multi-media content, each platform has what best works for it. For instance, Twitter is mostly driven by short, insightful messages called ‘tweets’. Instagram on the other hand is primarily a visual-driven platform which also allows you to post longer text ‘captions’ than Twitter. An understanding of the uniqueness of each platform will help you optimize your content for better performance.
Fifth is non-availability to answer enquiries. One of the beauties of social media is the opportunity it affords you to interact with your audience, get feedback from them, while also responding to their questions and concerns. As your audience grows and more people develop interest in your product and services, the need for quick and real-time interactions would arise. Eventually people would start making enquiries regarding your products, the price, the details, and other information they may deem necessary. Others will be giving feedback on their experience from using your products and services and the challenges they’ve faced so far. Some other people may just be mischief makers who are looking to drag your brand in the mud. You must always be available to respond to all these categories of people, especially your present customers and those genuinely interested in the products and services you offer. Once people make an enquiry and you don’t respond within a few minutes to one hour, they’d naturally begin to see you as an unserious brand.
Sixth is focusing on numbers instead of sales. This is a common mistake many people make, but which you should never fall into. Agreed, social media is mostly a game of numbers, but when it comes to business, gaining more paying customers and making profit is the end goal right? I mean no business will pick social media follower-ship over actual paying customers. So while it is good to bask in the euphoria of a growing number of social media audience, you should never forget that profit is the end goal. Always review your activities and optimize them for profitability. You should care more about getting followers who are genuinely interested in your product and are prospective customers, than millions of random people who will never patronize your brand.
Favour Onyeoziri is a social media influencer and a digital marketing practitioner. Follow him on twitter @rouvafe
