4 Social Media Mistakes You Could Be Making Right Now in Your Business!

Social media has become an integral part of any business’ online marketing strategy. However, the corporate social media world is relatively young. One of the biggest goals of using your business’ social media accounts is to ensure that you come across as an expert in your field, but there’s lots of inconsistent advice out there on how a company should build a social media personality that attracts the right attention.

Below are four mistakes that you should avoid making on social media. Some are easy to avoid, while others may require concerted efforts. By avoiding these mistakes, you will achieve a better experience on social media, as will your followers and fans.

Not Showing Personality

Overall, people like personality. People love it when a business shows its personality on social media – especially when it comes to businesses banter with other businesses. This is a fun way of engaging with your followers to get them to understand your business culture, as well as to offer them a taste of your brand.

Your personality can help attract the ideal target customer. And this is something that may just convince them to convert into loyal customers somewhere down the road.

You’re Promoting Your Brand Too Much

Currently, you are probably using social media to attract new business and interact with existing customers. As you can expect, this means that business social media accounts will contain some form of self-promotion. This is great; your customers already expect it and they are already fans of your services or products.

However, a problem starts to creep in when all you are doing is sending out self-promotional tweets or status updates. This adds no value to the lives of your fans and followers; in fact, it is equivalent to email spamming. This eventually leads to alienation of your existing customers, who unfollow you.

Consider what kind of content your customers will be interested in reading and sharing with friends and family. Next, post comments, tweets, and updates relevant to these topics and include links to information that is not directly related to your business. Such content adds value to your followers and may result in earning you, even more, followers due to the widespread sharing of information.

Poor Grammar

Before posting anything on social media, always check the posts for spelling and grammar errors. Too many errors in a post indicate how unprofessional you are. If your fans and followers notice that you do not even take the time to proofread your content, they will start mocking you – something you should avoid at all costs.

In addition, strong opinions or emotions can quickly lead to fans unfollowing. Always remember that you are crafting your business’ public image and there is no space for offensive statements or crude jokes. For example, American Apparel posted the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle thinking it was a fireworks display – the company had to publicly apologize and plead ignorance – so be careful.

No Activity

Some businesses set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, post a few articles, videos and tweets expecting that this will be enough to bring in a hoard of fans, hence potential customers. However, with no further input, the followers you did manage to gain soon become bored and click the unfollow or unlike button. People will never talk about your business if you are not engaging with them properly.

Like getting business insurance, where getting the right advice can save you, small businesses should also engage experts when creating their social media marketing strategies. Such experts can help you identify the right popular hashtags, create videos and come up with insights that you can add to your Twitter conversations. Whatever it is, make sure you offer your audience something they will enjoy whether photos, memes or jokes.