5 Common Social Media Mistakes Small Businesses Make

Carol Sobers
5 min readOct 14, 2020

Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to find a business that does not have a social media page. But the matter of concern is that just because everyone is on this platform does not make it the perfect destination for marketing your business. In fact, without a strategic plan and a smart marketing tactic, you cannot harness this platform for expanding your business reach.

Small businessmen often encounter this problem and end up losing the game. So, here are some of the social media mistakes that are usually ignored which might help you regain your business image and bring stability in your growth graph.

1. Lack of a strategic game plan

Social media is itself a game to be played with specific objectives and winsome strategy. To have an impactful presence on social media the businesses need to consider all the aspects of social media marketing.

Investing time to strategize a market plan before you launch your business on social media is the primary step towards social media marketing which will lead to better growth and success rate.

Having a social media presence will be a waste of time and energy if not managed properly. Eg- Posting once in a blue moon, or posting copied content will not give your followers a positive impression about your brand.

Also, it’s not necessary that the content which got much engagement on Facebook is likely to get the same impression on linkedIn. Businesses need to take care of these small mistakes as they might lead to a huge disaster which can ruin your market image in just no time.

2. Expanding more than your limits

It’s better to be best at a few things rather than to be average at everything. This statement clearly shows that businesses need to be very specific while expanding their social media market.

Small business enthusiasts often get convinced by the success stories of social media marketing and end up committing to all the social platforms at one time. They forget that to maintain the consistency they need to properly execute the social media accounts and balance the right flow of content.

Having a profile on social media is not enough, rather you need to have engaging content to make it work. To gain success out of your social media marketing plan, you need to have an immersive customer base and a cohesive bond between brand and customer.

It’s better to perform with your best efforts on two or three social networking sites to expand your brand’s reach and to keep up to the expectations of the customers.

Also, to avoid this situation, you can create a social media wall using an aggregator tool by aggregating content from various social media networks and embed it on your website for better customer engagement and experience.

3. Brushing off the word social from social media

Often, business forgets to get social on social media. They just create their room on the platform and forget to revisit that room again. They cease to remember that social media is a two-way conversational platform, unlike other stand-alone eCommerce platforms.

It’s not enough to post and publish content on social media, instead, you should actively participate and engage in the discussions with your followers to build a strong relationship with them.

The biggest challenge that comes with social media platforms is audience engagement and ignoring your audience can turn out to degrade your market image and diminish the potential for building new customers.

4. Losing the track of competitor’s analysis

Having a hawk-eye observation on your competitor’s actions and performance graph is the much-needed step to consider while utilizing social media as your marketing platform.

Competitor’s analyses play a crucial role in the survival of the business. It is important to keep the track of what your competitors are doing by frequently visiting their pages. This will provide you with valuable information and insights about what the customers are interested in and what they desire for.

By observing their social media traits, you can learn from your competitor’s mistakes, identify trending marketing opportunities, get inspired by their creativity and know more about your targeted audience’s interests.

5. Overlooking your insights and results

Self-evaluation is the key to success and failing to evaluate your results will make you fall in the trap of inconsistent performance. It ruins the purpose of getting social for marketing your business.

Instead, tracking your own performance leads towards establishing achievable goals and objectives. It is important to determine what attracts your audience, the perfect time to post, how often to post for better results.

It should be remembered that the follower’s count is not the only criteria to gain ROI, but their engagement and interaction is.

What is important is to have a bunch of real followers who are interested in your brand and are ready to make an investment in it. And, the only way to know about these followers is through mentions, tagged posts, comments, direct messages, etc.

Conclusion

To avoid ending up with wasted efforts, you need to understand that having a social media account is not just enough, rather you need to have an effective marketing strategy to push your limits and boost sales. Utilizing these tips can help you grow and garnish your business with a good market image and magnified sales.

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Carol Sobers

I am an enthusiastic content curator with a zeal to write anything and everything about content marketing and related domains