Are you making these mistakes on social media?

Social media is a funny thing. It’s free and easy to use. It can help you reach millions of potential customers. But when most people talk about it, they mention negatives!

Yes! it can be useful for business and marketing but…

It takes up so much time. It’s hard to know if it’s really working. It’s hard to come up with ideas. It’s hard to keep up. All of these things can be true. They’re also relatively easy to solve. Sometimes, the problem isn’t the one we think.

There are a few mistakes everyone makes on social media at some point

1. Worrying you’re not using the ‘right’ social media and spending too long switching from Facebook to Pinterest to Instagram without getting properly comfortable on one channel. Choose one, do it well then move on to the next.

2. Now and then. Feast or famine posting. Social media is social: it’s just like building friendships in real life. You know that friend who is super keen, bombards you with messages then disappears when she’s got something better to do and only comes back later when she’s at a loose end? That’s how many of us treat social media. Posting regularly really make a difference. Consistency builds results.

3. Just throwing out messages in hope. Random ideas, photos, occasional shares of other people’s posts. I see a lot of people posting without really expecting results. This might sound odd, but look through your last 10 social media posts. How many were designed to get your followers to actually do something?

4. Treating all social media channels the same. One post, perhaps scattered with a load of hashtags, duplicated on to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram? It looks odd, seems lazy and un-targeted and doesn’t work. It saves to save time, but if you don't get results...

5. Post and dash. One-way conversations that are really more like shouting from your upstairs window. If you just post on social media and then ignore the responses, and don’t have two-way conversations you won’t build engagement or followers. It’s social media because it’s social.

6. Believing there’s a secret sauce for success. Or some mythical technical knowhow everyone has except you. It’s not true! Social media is built to be simple. It is true the algorithms may be tricky to understand and quite changeable, but if you post regularly, adapt messages to your target markets, and respond to other people, you’re already on the right track.

7. Telling yourself you don’t have time for social media. You probably don’t have time to scroll on social media and other people's stuff. But you do have time to use it properly. Who doesn’t have five minutes a day when they could post and reach thousands of people free of charge?

A solution...

One aspect of social media can take a bit of time initially, and some knowhow: thinking up different posts and ideas for what to say that can get results. Most people think they don’t really have time to sit down and plan out posts in advance, but spending even an hour batching ideas can reap real rewards. It helps you to think through what you’re trying to achieve and how you want to get results, whether more bookings or visits.

If you're fed up of wasting time on social media and not really getting results, or feel like there must be an easier way, you might be interested in this short practical marketing workshop.