Social Media Mistakes You Have To Avoid

<p>Social media is a very powerful tool for your small business, but it can be really easy to get this wrong. Here we look at the areas where you can make small mistakes and what you need to do to avoid them.</p> <p>When you're growing a small business, social media is great for raising awareness of your brand and helps you to interact with people who are interested in your products or services. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can take your small business around the world in just a few clicks and this is great for building sales opportunities as well as interacting on a personal level to build trust.</p> <p>Social media is all about building trust but this can be stifled very quickly if you fail to meet some very basic aspects of your social media accounts and the posts you put out. Lets take a goosey at these common mistakes and how you can avoid them.</p> <h3>Inconsistent Usernames</h3> <p>This one happens far too often for small businesses. When you start your business you'll be eager to get all of the apps installed on your phone and start registering accounts. However we very often see that small businesses will setup a Facebook Page with one username and then Twitter with another one.</p> <p>Don't get us wrong, there's no Search Engine Optimisation impact, you'll still be able to put out posts on those platforms and people will engage with you if your posts draw them in however you're missing the first rule of marketing - consistency. Once your business starts to flourish through social media people will get used to seeing one username in their feeds but on other platforms they won't be able to instantly recognise you.</p> <p>We've seen examples where a preferred business usernames has been registered by someone else. To be honest that is a shame, but it's not the end of the world. Its about getting a username that will be consistent across all social media platforms and this may require you to think about different options that will carry weight moving forward.</p> <p>If you're not sure what username to pick and are worried about getting this important first step wrong then speak to you web design or marketing company. They will have the expertise and experience to help you find and secure the right consistent username for your small business.</p> <h3>Inconsistent Branding</h3> <p>This is another common mistake made by small businesses and is 90% of the time down to not having the right size pictures ready for the different platforms. </p> <p>The profile photo for Facebook, Twitter and Google Business are all different sizes, albeit by a few pixels. This gets further compounded with cover photos for each platform that are again different sizes. Consistency is once again the message here - ensure you create the right size images for each of the social media platforms before uploading them and you'll be getting this second step correct to your small business's success in social media.</p> <h3>Off-brand content</h3> <p>Some people love to fill their social media feeds with content. It's right that you should post content on a regular basis, ideally daily. However filling it with different topics, different styles of images, different messages from what your business actually does to pictures of cats won't build the consistency you need.</p> <p>Think about what you're trying to achieve and build your content and posts around the end game - generating a sale. Keep your content on message, offer information about your brand and associated brands/products/services/ to keep your message consistent and learn what excites your audience. Once you find a vein of content that your audience likes keep doing that and drop your brand in every so often.</p> <p>If you can't post every day, don't worry about it. Just keep your message about your brand and you'll being something that most small businesses don't do and end up failing - this will give you a cornerstone of a sound social media strategy.</p> <h3>Don't be too sales-y</h3> <p>You want a sale, we all do. It's one of the reasons we go into business and making profit is your end game. However social media is all about being "social" and not overtly selling your product or service.</p> <p>Even big brands get this wrong and post offer after offer and forget what social media is all about. Niche brands win time after time by being human and relatable and this is what you're trying to achieve.</p> <p>Join a few groups that are associated to the sector you're in and start answering questions people put out. Once you start to be seen as relatable and helpful you'll start to get mentions, more like, more followers and...more leads to convert into business. You'll start selling by word of mouth rather than just via your sales led posts and this will generate you respect and trust which is hard to achieve if all you do is "shout" about your business and how awesome you (think) you are.</p> <h3>Poor interaction with others</h3> <p>I've kind of covered this above in terms of being relatable, but it does need reiterating. Not engaging with others will be to your detriment.</p> <p>You have to start talking to people via social media as well as tag others into your posts and comments that will help them become aware of things going on outside of their normal social media circles. This will increase your interaction, raise the number of mentions others make about you and you'll start to be trusted by the information and advice you put out.</p> <p>Once that trust has begun to be built you will start to get sales leads and enquiries. "People by from people" and being seen as human rather than just a capitalistic business looking to generate profit will win people over and your sales will inevitably rise.</p> <p>Don't ignore the power of talking to people and listening to their wants and needs. This will help you become recognised as a trusted source and that is what social media is all about - doing this will ensure that you succeed online rather than become a business trying desperately to sell and end up missing out on sales.</p>