3 social media marketing mistakes and how to fix them

By now, brands like yours have adapted to the digital age of marketing. You know what it takes to thrive online and how to prompt brand popularity, but you also know that obstacles are inevitable.

As always, we’re here to assist you when those problems arise — and we’ve enlisted the help of Sabrina Kizzie, marketing consultant and social media lecturer at City University of New York - Baruch College. Together, we've outlined three common social media marketing mistakes and what you can do to fix them.

1. Not having a clear understanding of goals

When you’re setting the groundwork for your social media marketing strategies, you want to do so clearly and with intention. 

“From the onset, one of the challenges is really knowing what you’re marketing, what your social media goals are and what you want to achieve with those, and everybody on your team should know what those goals are,” said Kizzie.

Before you question how such a simplistic approach could be beneficial in the middle of a social media storm, we urge you to take this time to remember how important the fundamentals of basic marketing practices are.

“Brands and companies need direction. They need to be able to ask, ‘What is the end result? What is the purpose of our social media marketing?’ Goal-setting is huge in any aspect of business. You want to know what you’re trying to accomplish. You want to be able to analyze those results at the end," Kizzie said.

Let’s say your goal is to increase your social media followers in three months. You want to have a clear start and end date from which your results can be measured, so that at the conclusion of the campaign you can ask yourself, “Did we achieve that goal?” 

Kizzie also suggests using key performance indicators (KPIs) to guide your social media marketing strategies. These can include, but are not limited to: conversion rates, inbound leads, social media ROI and rate of engagement. Doing a competitive analysis and seeing what your competitors are currently engaging in — their presence on social media, their blog, their podcast, etc. — can help you not only in defining those KPIs, but also in providing you with direction on how to connect with your audience.

The solution? Have conversations about what the goals are, when you need to meet them and how you’re going to go about achieving them.

2. Not tailoring social media content to fit its target audience

We know you’re already aware, but let us remind you: Your target audience is critical to your success. 

You likely know all the demographics behind your target audience, including your social media followers. You know what they like and how they like it, so doesn’t it make sense to share that knowledge clearly on social media?

And this goes for both how you create your content and where you're posting it. Identifying the right platform for your audience is key to making sure your messages get out in front of the right people.

“You must go where your target audience is. If your target audience is millennials and you’re a clothing brand, you’re most likely better suited for a platform like Instagram than LinkedIn. You want to tailor your content to where your audience is,” said Kizzie. “I’ll see brands put the exact same message on three different platforms; brands must realize that you have to tailor your content to fit these platforms.”

Kizzie means this literally and figuratively. Social media is half about what you say and half about what you see. You want to make sure that the dimensions of your photos, the quality of your videos and the clarity of your audio is all properly rendered and optimized for its designated channel. This means that what might work on Instagram might not work on Snapchat and you want to be aware of that.

Remember that each platform serves different purposes, and in many cases different audiences who want to see different things. They expect their content to be delivered a certain way, and when you craft a tweet the same way you write a professional LinkedIn post, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Look at the content you want to develop, see if it’s a good fit, and tailor it to that platform. Individuals are very savvy now and they can tell when brands didn’t invest the time to properly utilize their social media effectively.

3. Not effectively connecting with social media followers

Despite the many innovative ways it’s used today, social media was designed to connect and inform — your social media marketing should honor that.

As a consumer-facing brand, having a good relationship with your customers is essential to your brand’s marketing. Social media is where your ability to effectively communicate with your customers gets put to the test.

“I got the opportunity to visit the Twitter headquarters a few years ago, and one of the senior leaders said that Twitter is the new customer service. Basically what he’s saying is that that’s where consumers are going to voice their concerns about brands,” said Kizzie. “Consumers have the expectation now that if they post something about your brand, that they’re going to hear a response within two hours.”

As a result of new consumer standards, a lot of brands have someone allocated to serve as a customer service representative or social media manager so that if something is said online, they can respond quickly.

“Consumers appreciate when they tweet something out or leave a comment and they get a response right away,” said Kizzie. “Engagement is so critical; when consumers engage with your brand you have to reciprocate and respond back. If someone is making a testimonial about your brand, there’s nothing better.”

Kizzie says she follows the 80/20 rule: Eighty percent of her content is practical information for her audience and the remaining content is brand specific. She says the same thing can apply to your brand. 

“This way consumers can see your brand from the lens of: ‘They’re going to give me everything I need to know about their industry, plus they’re going to tell me about the products and services.' This approach leaves your consumers feeling well-informed and confident that they can trust your credibility in the future," said Kizzie.

Knowing how to navigate social media marketing means understanding the things that work best for your brand and knowing how to avoid the things that don’t. This post is meant to serve as helping hand through those potential obstacles and means of staying away from them.