Most Common Mistakes Made by Businesses on Social Media

5 things to avoid when promoting your business on social channels

Once you’ve taken the leap to start advertising your business on social media, it’s so important that you utilise your platforms to the best of their ability so that you can reap the benefits on offer.

To help you make the most of your efforts, we asked our own social media guru what mistakes are most commonly made but businesses on social media and she said…

1) Not Having a Strategy 

If you don’t have a goal in mind for your social media channels and are just posting for the sake of it, you’re wasting the effort spent sharing and won’t see any focused results. 

First, determine who your target audience is. Once you’ve decided, make sure that every post has been created with them in mind and will benefit them in some way. 

Also, you need to decide what you want to achieve from social media. Do you want to generate more brand awareness? Sell more products? You need to make sure that all of your posts are a step towards this end goal.

2) Being too Personal

This one treads a fine line because it’s so beneficial to let people know the face behind the business in order to develop relationships with your community. However, there is a way to take this too far. 

Make sure all of the content you’re sharing on social media is relevant to either your business or the surface level of yourself e.g. what you’re getting up to on your day off. Avoid oversharing anything that might make your audience uncomfortable and therefore put off your business e.g. political views.

3) Not Using a Brand Kit

When posting on social media, it’s vital that you have a cohesive, memorable brand that will encourage recognition from your audience. 

Your branding includes your logo, fonts and colours, it can also include the type of graphics you share and the tone of voice you write with.

4) Avoiding Engagement 

Make your customers feel valued and appreciated by engaging with them regularly. This is a great way to build a relationship with your audience, which will ultimately encourage return visits and longevity. 

You should also be open to communicating with local businesses as you never know how you could end up collaborating and supporting each other!

5) Not Selling Products

The most common way to share content on social media for businesses is the 80/20 rule: 80% of the time you should provide your audience with value and 20% of the time should be selling your own products. 

While you don’t want to constantly sell to your audience (because who would follow an account that did that?) you also don’t want them to forget what you have to offer and how they can purchase from you.