10 Social Media Marketing Mistakes, You Should Avoid

Social media marketing is something that everyone is adopting. Be it an established business or a small local business. Everyone wants to jump onto the bandwagon of making their brand presence felt on social networks. The simple reason is – that’s where the crowd is. However, there are some common social media marketing mistakes visibly noticed.

• Why are all endeavors not successful?
• Why are all Facebook and Google Plus pages as popular?
• Why are your competitors doing better on SMM?
• What promises are you making and not catering to?

Various questions need to be answered. Hence, here are the top 10 social media marketing mistakes that you should not make in your marketing:

1. Don’t Jump Into Social Media Marketing Without A Plan!

Most companies might have experienced this and you could be one of them. The story goes like this: you decide to join the social network, make your profiles, load it with info, put great stuff out there to attract attention, and then disappear. Within weeks of your ‘super’ launch your page is converted into a barren land with followers wondering what they are doing there and some people seeking answers and getting no replies. Your social media presence soon becomes a flop show!

So the first step is to have a social media marketing plan.

The plan should be such that it should build on your presence and not let it dwindle. Any plan would need:

• Time investment
• Strategy and goals
• Team for interaction

You need to keep your resources in place to have the game progressing.
Another mistake people make is to throw links on the internet on all social networks. Why post irrelevant links? They never work. Spamming

3. Multiple Profiles On Social Sites

This is another trend where a company has more than one profile on sites like Facebook and Twitter – all of which link to the main website. For one thing, having more than one profile is not legally right. For another, it’s a waste! Put in efforts in one direction and get people, real people, to your company. No point in building loads of followers who aren’t interested in your work and are simply connecting to build a ‘following’.

4. Very Little Interaction

In many cases, profiles have updates but no participation in the conversation. Lack of conversation with your clients and followers decreases the value of your social presence and you don’t build valuable relationships

5. No Real Followers

This is a big mistake – keeping an active page with a lot of info but no real followers. This means you don’t really have virtual support and weakens the basis of your social existence. To avoid this, it’s important to build a slow and steady network of real people.

6. Bookmarking Randomly

Social bookmarking is important. But if you are bookmarking all sites with back-links to your website, with no real relevance, then it’s not going to work well for your business.

7. Automated Posting Of Links

Another mistake is the automated posting of back-links to your website. Of course, automation eases the load on your manual efforts, but a structure is needed and randomness doesn’t pay. You only look like just – another – spamming site!

8. Less Visibility

This is an interlinked factor where you seem media shy! There are various profiles that are extremely careful in a bid to be less aggressive and hence, end up going unnoticed. It’s important to be active and visible.

9. Not Spending Wisely

Social media marketing is an affordable platform which is its greatest charm. Yet, not spending wisely in the bargain is what should not happen. You may spend too much on social media ads but nothing on hiring an SEO company to do your SMO work. Isn’t that a bad choice? Why not make a balance and use your money well?

10. Your Target

And the most important is to know your target audience. Aiming in the dark may seem like you are working very hard, but in the end, results will suffer!

The author is an SEO strategist and a content writer. She enjoys research and working in areas of web development, link building, and social media marketing.