4 Social Media Mistakes To Avoid For Your Small Business

Small Business Man With Social Media Icons Making Social Media Mistakes

Are you a small business owner who is at the early stages of social media marketing? Or perhaps you’ve been giving social media posting a go but you’re not feeling the full benefits? You could be making one of these simple but impactful social media mistakes. 

When done well, social media marketing has the power to build brand awareness, strengthen your relationship with your customers, and even increase leads. However, it can be very easy to make mistakes, especially in the early stages. Let’s take a look at four of the most common mistakes small businesses make on social media and how you can fix them.

1. Inconsistency

Inconsistency can creep up in social media through a number of ways, beyond just being inconsistent with the amount of times you post. You may be unknowingly straying away in a number of other ways, including in areas like design and copy. Ask yourself, do any of these ring true for you? 

  • The designs you’re using on social media don’t follow strict guidelines. You have your brand colours but can be tempted to add new elements in, like fonts you’ve found that you like, or a colour which is a bit different to the norm.

  • Your brand doesn’t have a defined tone of voice. Depending on how rushed they are,  posts could be youthful and friendly, with emojis and exclamation marks, and other times more formal. Perhaps you have multiple people in the business who post on social, and it’s clear who has posted based on their captions.

     

  • You feel a rush of productivity and get multiple posts per day planned out, but then become too busy and stop posting for a while. You’re struggling to stick to a set posting routine and fall into the trap of panic posting.

Whether your small business is posting on social media once a week or everyday, it’s so important that you choose and stick to a schedule. Opt for a posting schedule you feel comfortable with and that you can keep up with. 

When it comes to content, being consistent on social media is the key to growing an engaged audience and building brand awareness. In the fast-paced environment that is social media marketing, consistency is what makes your content relevant. You may want to consider building a set of social media brand guidelines and sharing them with everyone in your team who has access to the brand’s social profiles. Outline your brand’s tone of voice, emoji use and design elements, including colours, fonts, illustrations and asset layouts. This will ensure everyone is on the same page and all content being posted aligns with your brand identity and wider social media strategy.

2. Lack of Strategy

New businesses often fall into the trap of posting content without having a clear strategy behind it. While posting content is usually better than not posting at all, it’s important that you put thought into the content you’re sharing with your audience. Building a robust social media strategy means that your content has direction, and your posting with purpose.

When you sit down to work on your social media strategy in those early days, your first step should be to identify your target audience. We recommend making audience profiles! These are fictional profiles that represent groups of people within a target audience, and they can help you gain an understanding of the needs and wants of your audience. 

Next, you’ll want to pick the social media platforms that you’d like to pay the most attention to. Get to grips with the various social media platforms available to you, their demographics, uses and advantages, then think about how they each align with your target audience. Check out our blog on choosing the perfect social media platforms for your brand for some more tips!

All content being posted on your business’s social media profiles should be in line with your brand values and overarching marketing strategy. It should foster trust and work towards building a relationship with your audience. At the end of the day, customers won’t trust your brand unless they feel as though they can trust the people behind it! Build trust with your audience in the early days to create a sense of brand loyalty and always make sure you’re posting with purpose, striving to reach those wider marketing goals. 

3. Handling Negative Reviews Poorly

As a small business, receiving negative feedback can sometimes feel really personal. A social media mistake is not replying properly though. Your brand is your baby after all and reading a negative review can be hurtful, but it’s important to take feedback on board and respond professionally. Even negative reviews have the potential to be helpful! They can give you the opportunity to learn from past mistakes and turn poor experiences into something positive. 

If you see someone tagging your brand on social media with a complaint try to take care of it privately. Respond and ask them to send you a direct message so you can work to resolve the issue. Use these situations as an opportunity to demonstrate how seriously you take complaints and how you value constructive criticism.

4. Neglecting Your Audience

Once your posts are live, it can be easy to forget to check back in on them and create conversations with your audience. This is what is known as “community management” and is a vital part of growing your social media presence. Creating conversations with your community provides you with a great opportunity to build trust between you as a brand, and your customers. 

Interact with engagements from your audience, whether they’ve left positive feedback, a negative review or a question. As we spoke about earlier, tackling negative feedback is a task in itself, however, the positivity should not go unnoticed either. Thank your audience for the lovely comments, ask them further questions and start building relationships! 

Encourage engagement by asking questions in your copy and using an active tone of voice. Incorporate polls (many social media platforms support this function) or pop a Q&A box up on your Instagram story. Not only does this double as free market research, but your audience will feel much more connected to your brand if communication is a two-way street.

Talk to Victress About Social Media Mistakes To Avoid

Looking for some guidance on how to use social media as a small business? Get in touch today for a free consultation with a member of our team.

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