Building a social media strategy plan is something that every company is doing now, be it small or big companies. The field of social media marketing is developing with numerous trends that are emerging like a mushroom in the market.

The strategy that was used a few years back in social media may not be relevant and deliver the same results compared to these days because they won’t meet the customers’ preferences and requirements.

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT EVERY MARKETER WOULD LOVE TO LEVERAGE THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA. IN THE PROCESS OF BUILDING THE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY, IT’S NORMAL TO CONCEDE SOME MISTAKES FROM MARKETERS.

1. FAIL TO ADDRESS THE GOAL OF THE STRATEGY

Creating a social media marketing strategy seems so easy to do, but many of the companies fail to do so and the main reason is choosing the wrong KPIs. The social media team or a marketer must understand the strategy is not just posting things in social media without any purpose. Without the list of objectives, budget planning and defining the plan of action, the strategy which is followed is bound to be a failure in the future.

Tips: Create a plan of action, schedule the post in each platform, budgeting, and KPIs of each platform.

2. PROMOTING TOO MUCH OF PRODUCT-CENTRIC CONTENT

How would you feel when a person who only talks about himself? That gets boring quickly, right? Too much promotional contents are mostly hated by the audience and the company loses interest from their followers in doing so. Robotic-type of conversation where the content only pushes the products results in losing the followers and likes in social media.

Tips: Use one promotional post for every four non-promotional posts.

3. MISSING OUT PURPOSE WHILE POSTING CONTENTS.

While most of the marketers are content creator, they fail to stand out in terms of meeting the purpose of the particular content. It’s obvious that being regular benefits the strategy but without the purpose in the contents, the strategy looks pointless and ultimately fails. Random posting without defining any thought or what the content is delivering is just a “post and hope” strategy.

Tips: Use content that delivers value such as influencing the target audiences, brand awareness contents.

4. TREATING ALL SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM AS SAME.

Never treat all the social media platforms the same. (Image Source: KissClipart.com)

While all social media platforms have the same outlet, they differ and have their own identity. It’s beneficial to have a different plan in customization of contents, time of the posting, profile building, and engagement through all the social media platforms. As a marketer, you have to start discovering new ways to leverage the opportunities from each of the social media platforms to grow the business and increase the exposure in the market.

Tips: Don’t post the same content in all the social media profile. Instead, learn which content resonates best on each social media platform.

5. FAILING TO ENGAGE WITH THE AUDIENCE/FOLLOWERS

The number of posts, lengthy captions don’t have any value unless the content is successful in attracting audiences and engaging with them. If the updates go unnoticeable and don’t get minimum engagement, whole social media strategy and the content itself must get revamped.  Lack of conversation with the audiences and followers decreases the value of business’ social presence and fails to build on valuable relationships.

Tips: Encourage the followers to engage in the account by different tricks such as playing quiz, using stories (Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat) and giveaways. Cross promotion can also help.

6. IGNORING AUDIENCES’ NEGATIVE FEEDBACK AND RESPONSES.

Never ignore negative social media feedbacks; instead, take your time. (Image source: innermedia.co.uk)

Ignoring the negative feedbacks and deleting as well as neglecting creates more negative emotions among audiences. Many a time, audiences like to question about the product and services, which is the rightful opportunity to connect with them and provide them with the information they are seeking. It will be difficult to diverse audience’s attention to the brand, once they are ignored.

Tips: Take full advantage of feedback, be it negative or positive, use it to engage with prospects and audiences. Thank them for the feedback and don’t use the defensive response to the comment.

7. FAILING TO TRACK INSIGHTS, ANALYTICS, AND RESULTS

The numbers actually matter in making a successful social media strategy. The analytics and insights actually show where the visitors and followers are coming from and perform as a catalyst to run B2C business successfully in social media platforms. Failing to understand the analytics will be hazardous for the markers as they won’t be able to predict the audience preference and trends in the market.

Tips: Use different social media marketing tools such as Social Mention, Google Alerts, Hashtagify to analyze the results and to know the trends in the market.

8. NOT HAVING A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

A B2B company has a good social media team and an excellent strategy, but if the company doesn’t have any social media policy, the business fails. Without the policy, the company fails to manage public relation and can’t save its reputation in the market. The company must be able to track what employees are saying about the company in social media, and must address to its employees not to reveal confidential information.

Tips: A detailed ‘code of conduct’ for all the employees before joining the company can save the embarrassments on social media.

CONCLUSION

Address the mistakes as soon as possible before they make negative vibes in the market, or else the marketing effort may look pointless and the brand may lose its reputation in the market. Highly focused social media marketing strategy on customers and significant engagement from their side would be beneficial for any social media marketing team of B2C companies or the social media marketing agency they are hiring.