There is a lot involved with creating a strong social media presence for your business, so it’s understandable that you might be making a few mistakes and not even know it. This doesn’t mean you need to throw out all your efforts thus far! You just need to be aware of the areas where you can improve. In this post, we talk about 3 mistakes you might be making on your business’s social media, give you some tips on how to improve, and share some resources with you. Let’s begin!

1. You don’t respond to comments & reviews.

No one loves criticism, but the whole point of your business’s social media is to interact with fans. The last thing you want is for a potential customer or client to see that you are silent in review sections and in comment threads. It will seem like you don’t care, like don’t know what you are doing, or like you’re too “busy” to provide feedback.

But we know that’s not true! You want to see your business grow, and you care about what your customers’ opinions. So where do you begin? Start by reading How to Respond To Negative Facebook Reviews- A Complete Guide. You will learn how to respond to any kind of review and how to create a system to stay on top of fan interaction.

2. You don’t have a strategy.

Coming up with a strategy for your business’s social media sounds intimidating, but it can actually be simple and fun. We know you might feel pulled and pushed in every direction— “Oh, you just HAVE to be on Instagram!” or “I post to Facebook 5 times a day, don’t you?” and “Where’s your blog at?” . . . Then there’s that one person who will throw some marketing jargon at you, plus something about SEO, and then you are thoroughly confused on where to begin with your social media strategy.

Trust us, it doesn’t have to be a huge, daunting task. And you don’t have to know everything about social media to begin. Here’s a list of questions to get your thoughts flowing and narrow down a few decisions:

• Who is your audience? Where do they live, what are their interests, what social platforms do they use? Jot down a few questions like these and see if you can answer them for your business.
• What are frequent questions that you get about your business that you could post about on social?
• What does your social look like now? What would you improve right off the bat?
• Check your Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights. When is the best time for you to post?
• What does your personal schedule look like? What time can you carve out each week to devote a few hours to planning out your posts ahead of time?
• What are the best things about your business? What makes you stand out? Make a list—that’s content!
• What are others saying about you on social—that’s even more content and it’s user-generated!
• Make a list of the different types of posts and plug them into a monthly calendar. For example—staff highlights, client testimonials, information about your services, local events, etc. Plug these ideas into a monthly calendar and move these ideas around as necessary. The point is to have something to work with already in place, so you can think ahead and not get overwhelmed.
• What isn’t working that you could stop? Maybe your business doesn’t need a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest . . . maybe your business will get the best results with just LinkedIn & Facebook.
• What is in the future for your business? Are there any special promotions or occasions on the horizon? Plan, plan, plan! 
• What are your goals? To get more likes, to raise awareness of an issue or new product . . . Figure out your “why“ and that will definitely illuminate which strategies you should pursue or avoid.

Want some more ideas? Check out one of these blog posts for more guidance: 

• 10 Easy Ways to Step Up Your Social Media Game in 2017
• 4 Reasons Why You Should Outsource Social Media for Your Business

3. You only offer the “hard sell.”

Your fans followed you because they are interested in what you have to share and your content adds value to their lives. They do not want to be constantly asked to purchase something. Focus instead on showing them why your business is the best, the values or interests you care about, how you can solve a problem . . . that’s the way. If all you offer is “Pick me, Pick me!” people will unfollow because you no longer add any value to their newsfeed. You’ve probably already thought of great ideas for posts that your fans would love. Put some space in between posts that ask fans to purchase your service and add in some of those ideas.

Are you making any of these mistakes on social media? Hopefully, this blog post offered some ideas on how you can course correct! We write about ways that you can improve your social media presence all the time and will be back with more tips soon. Thank you for reading!

Pipeline Social Media is a digital marketing agency that offers three approaches to help you increase your social media presence: we can fully manage your social media accounts, we can teach your team how to do it in-house, or we can monitor/coach your team along the way and report back to you. Ask us about our Google AdWords management, web design, and SEO website packages.

Maiya Wall
Social Media Community Manager
Pipeline Social Media