1. Not knowing your audience
Every day a new business joins Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and the list goes on. While joining can be exciting, you must have a strategy ready to be executed. Although it has almost become imperative for businesses to join social media, it is important to remember that not all social media sites are created equal. You must know your audience. Knowing your audience is important in all facets of marketing but it’s especially important when determining your social media presence. Not knowing your audience could have you in a space that you don’t belong. For example, if you are trying to target retires you probably have no reason to join snapchat or Instagram. Before you join any site, research the audience then determine if that audience matches yours. 23.68 billion dollars is spent each year on social media advertising. A moderate percentage of that money is wasted because some advertisers don’t do their due diligence. There are several varying types of social media to pick from when determining your brand’s place online and making sure that you’re in the right place, at the right time. For example: if your business is focused on the gaming industry then it would be important to make sure that your business has a presence in online gaming communities. If your business is focused on professional development than it would be important for you to be involved in business communities. If your business goal is to get more interaction, then perhaps the more popular social media sites are what best fits your company landscape.
2. Lack of Purposeful Engagement
In addition to knowing your audience you must also know why you are joining a particular social media site. Are you joining to promote, advertise, engage or listen? If you don’t know why you are joining you won’t have any insight on what you are going to say or do once you join. As a business owner you must have a purpose behind what you do in order to effectively measure results. If you are unsure of which social media sites (if any) are right for your brand there are a variety of social tools available that tell you not only how well you are doing but offers suggestions on how you can improve engagement, best times to be active and what posts are most successful. These tools combined with your own market research can have your brand well on your way to a successful social media campaign.
3. Wasting Time Thinking Through the Process
One of the biggest mistakes; however, that you can make is simply wasting time thinking through the process. If after you’ve done all your research you are still unable to determine which sites you should build your presence on then perhaps you can just simply run some testing. Give any social media channel of your desire a shot and see how well it goes. If it fail, that’s okay. If it does well that’s even better but one of the biggest mistakes you can do is allow the fear of striking out to keep you out of the game. Think out the box, be willing to grow, be willing to learn and if all else fails, don’t fret because it’s better to have failed trying than to simply spend your valuable business resources not trying at all.
