Social media enable organizations to foster online communities and engage with audiences on a broader scale. However, without a clear plan, organizations often repeat common mistakes that stall digital success. Here are five pitfalls to avoid when creating your social media strategy.
1. Not Understanding Your Audience
Failing to know your audience can lead to content that does not reach or resonate with the right people. It is essential to identify the people and organizations that will most likely pay attention to and engage with your content, ideally before launching your platform. By first understanding your audience, you can better craft content and refine your message to reach people on a personal level. Organizations that develop clear audience personas and messaging frameworks before launching social media find greater success.
2. Treating All Social Media Networks the Same
Each platform serves a different purpose for a different audience. It is essential to plan and strategize how your business will appear and act on each platform as it functions differently. Ultimately, this determines what kind of content you will post. For example, as stated in Social Media Marketing: What It Is and How to Build Your Strategy, Instagram is centered around visual content. TikTok is video dominated with its viral trends and niche communities. X (formerly known as Twitter) is still the desired place for blogging and LinkedIn is a platform for professional community-building. Differentiating the platforms helps you to choose wisely where you want to focus your efforts and engage your audience.
3. Not Developing a Style
Make sure that the brand personality and its values are clear in every communication. A consistent visual identity is also essential in helping your audience become familiar with your brand. This brand separates you from other businesses and shines a light on your online presence. Tone, content, and language should be adapted to cater to the specific audience. At Blackberg, we first create social media guidelines that align with organizational goals and digital best practices before launching social media.
4. Not Having a Clear Posting Schedule
The kind of content you publish matters, but so does posting frequency. Finding out what time of the day is best to post and how often can lead to higher engagement and an increase in your following. According to the Top Ten Social Media Mistakes You Should Avoid, over-posting can lead to burnout, repeated content, or grammatical errors. Under-posting can lead to lower engagement and a lesser reach. This schedule can all be avoided by creating a strategic posting schedule and being consistent with it.
5. Failing to Use Marketing Tools
The job doesn’t stop after clicking the post button. Monitoring engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, shares, and saves, provides valuable insights into what is effective and what is not. This monitoring helps refine posts to those that resonate the most. Social media management platforms like Sprout Social can not only track engagement, but also, view in-depth analytics, plan, create, and manage content and campaigns, and much more.
Avoiding these common mistakes when creating a social media strategy helps enhance your online presence and achieve your marketing goals. It can be exciting to start planning to post online and use all the fun tools and features available on social media. However, success requires a combination of strategy, consistency, brand recognition, and audience understanding. If you put these ideas into practice, your social media presence will flourish.
Blackberg’s social media experts understand how to create an effective digital strategy with curated content, data-driven analytics, and custom branding that drives awareness and engagement. To learn more about our communications offerings, visit our service line page here.