5 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes

Social media is one of the most effective tools for successful inbound marketing and its capabilities are continuously expanding. For companies new to the inbound process (or even veterans), embarking with a new social media strategy can be a daunting challenge. There are more than few do’s and don’ts, but very few companies manage their social media accounts perfectly.

In an effort to be as vigilant as possible about properly using your social channels, here’s a breakdown of some common social media mistakes to avoid:

1. Talking Only About Yourself

While this is certainly not a recommendation to never mention your own products or services, it’s a critical mistake to use social media channels exclusively for self-promotion. Social media is intended to strike up conversation within the context of your industry, indirectly putting your business in the spotlight without selling your business directly. Your job should be to share valuable content with your users as a catalyst for relationship building.

2. Failure to Be Persistent

If there are excessively large gaps between your social media posting, it becomes more difficult to gain consistent traffic or engagement. Persistence means posting almost everyday on a consistent cadence (whether weekends are excluded is dependent on your audience or industry). As an aside, creating monthly social calendars is a great way to pre-plan your posts in advance to ensure you’re updating your accounts on a regular basis.

3. Posting Too Much at Once

While failing to consistently post is an issue, posting too much can be equally unproductive. As Buffer makes clear, there are diminishing returns for each social media channel based upon amounts posted per day (although the number changes from channel to channel). For instance, the optimal number of Facebook postings per day is two before a decrease in return is noticeable. The number is three for Twitter and five for Pinterest before similar decreases in return.

4. Not Engaging Followers

While creating a content calendar is a great way to pre-plan posts and ensure you post regularly, it shouldn’t be used as a cop out for actually engaging with people. For this reason, you need to set aside at least some time to allow for flexibility and monitoring of your accounts. As people engage, you need to engage back. Social media, especially in a B2B context, is all about developing relationships.

5. Not Targeting Personas

Hopefully, you’ve already identified your target personas before you create your social media strategy. Understanding how your target persona or audience thinks and behaves is vitally important before ever drafting social media posts. No matter what you draft for your social channels, you should always have a specific buyer persona in mind before sending.

What does this mean for Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is dependent on the creation of quality content and persona targeting. No inbound marketing strategy is complete without a strong concept of the customer base and what subject matters interest them. Social media is not only an avenue for sharing exceptional targeted content, but providing a way to converse naturally with soon-to-be leads. Avoid these common social media mistakes and your inbound marketing efforts will be that much stronger.