Is your business getting the most out of digital marketing? Whether your business is new to social or not, you might be making a few mistakes that are keeping you from reaching as many potential customers as possible. In this post, we have 3 more social media no-nos to share with you and how you can turn things around today!
1. You don’t know when to post.
When it comes to updating your business’s social media channels, which of the following sounds most like you?
- “I post at random to my social media channels! There’s no rhyme or reason . . . I just feel it out.”
- “I am ON social. I’m constantly tweeting, sharing, snapping, and everything in between.”
- “I haven’t posted in months and now I can’t even begin because I’m behind and overwhelmed.”
- “I am currently pulling my hair out trying to get my posting schedule right, but I can’t seem to stay on top of it.”
- “I usually realize that I haven’t posted in a good month, post something, and then the forgetful cycle begins again.”
- “I can schedule my Facebook and twitter Updates??”
If you identify with one or more of these, we want to share a few steps for you to get your business’s social on track.
Step 1: Create social calendar for your business
The first thing you need to do is create a social calendar. Online or physical—doesn’t matter. Here are some things to consider before plugging things into your calendar:
- What are the current trends surrounding my industry?
- What makes my business stand out? What areas could use some improvement?
- What are some upcoming important dates or promotions for my business?
- What holidays are coming up? Is there a marketing or giveaway opportunity?
- Is the info on my social profiles up to date? Is my website up to date?
- Do I have employee birthdays or other post-worthy employee dates coming up?
We are sure you can think of more. The main idea is to think of any content opportunities that are time sensitive first.
Next, you need to list every idea you can think of that would be good to post on your business’s social channels. Don’t dwell on the details, just get all of your ideas out. Once you’ve done that, the fun part starts.
- Get a highlighter and highlight every post that would be good to share with your followers and potential followers.
- Make notes beside ideas that are time sensitive or dependent on something else happening first.
- Make notes beside ideas that will work only on Instagram or only on Facebook . . . think of ways to adapt posts for different channels and make a note of that too.
Afterwards, you will have a long list of content and we bet you even thought up some things that you hadn’t considered before! From here you can begin plugging content ideas into your social calendar.
Now what time should you post? Check out this comprehensive article: Best Times to Post on Social Media: A Complete Guide
All of this does take a bit of time, but planning posts will be 10 times smoother afterwards. If you don’t have time to invest in a social calendar we can help!
2. You don’t stay in your lane in digital marketing- What you should be posting about and where to post
The cool thing about your business being active on social media is the opportunity to market to people where they already are. Your future followers are already on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter . . . You just need to show up with some great content for your business. The tricky thing about being active on social media is that there’s just a lot going on all the time.
Users are buying things, catching up on the news, catching up with family members, or talking about themselves and other people. Users are sharing things that make them laugh, or make others think, or they’re sharing things in the hopes of shaping others perception of them. Social media has grown far past being a cool place where you can talk to your friends online. All of this noise can be overwhelming when it comes to deciding what you as a business owner should speak up about.
It’s great that social media gives everyone a platform to say whatever they want, but the main thing for you to remember is to firstly talk about your business and what your business offers. You will definitely post about different topics and you should, but posts that are specifically about your business need to be primary and good. Another thing to remember when deciding what to post about—don’t chase trends. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be knowledgeable on what is going on in your industry and what your fans care about. You should definitely be catering to that as well. It means to not be constantly switching up your posting strategy based on what you see online. Just because that other business does a daily giveaway doesn’t mean you need to start giving away all of your merchandise. So how do you guard yourself against caving to the pressure of trends? Create some rules for your social media calendar to follow:
Post about-
- Business services – 5 X per month
- Employee updates – 3 X per month
- Updates in your field – 3 X per month
- Business blog article- 2 X per month
- Customer reviews- 4 X per month
- Link to business website- 4 X per month
This is just an example. Decide what is important to you and stick to posting about those things for a while. That way, after a few months, you’ll be able to see the trajectory of your business’s social. Once you’ve had some time to actually learn what works and what doesn’t, you can adjust those rules. It doesn’t hurt to implement some personal policies for yourself either. What, under any circumstances, are you not willing to do? Maybe you don’t want to be on Snapchat . . . you don’t care for it. Maybe you’ve tried it for your business for a while and it wasn’t jiving. Decide and commit to a code that you wont put any effort towards Snapchat until you think it is necessary. That’s okay to do! Then, when see another business is on Snapchat doing well, you can remember that you have already decided that it isn’t for you right now and you have other channels that you are working on.
Where should you post? If you are new to all this, try a bunch of different platforms until you know what is working for you and your business. Once you figure out which platforms give you the best return on your efforts, give your full attention to those. If your business has been on social for a while, maybe it’s time to evaluate where you’ve been posting. Do you have a business Twitter account that you are still struggling to get engagement? Maybe pause on that channel for now and put more time into a channel that’s doing better. At Pipeline, we have clients with only one or two channels that do phenomenal with engagement and followers. Some will tell you that you need to be everywhere, but that is not true! Just do what works for you. This brings us to our last point—
3. You aren’t consistent
Lots of things will work for your business and get engagement on social media but, as we’ve already stated, you need to decide and stick. The next thing to do is simple—just follow through! At the end of the day, your plans and social calendar don’t matter if you are not being consistent with posting. After you create a plan for your business’s social, do whatever you need to do to stay on top of that commitment. This could mean:
- Using a scheduling app like Buffer.
- Delegating your social media to an employee, new hire, or outsourcing to a social media management company
- Working on your social media the same day every week
- Setting alarms and reminders for yourself
Being consistent is just a good rule in general . . . If you consistently say that you have the best costumer service, then your response rate to engagement and messages needs to be top notch. If you promise your followers something— a giveaway, more information, updates on a product release, etc . . . deliver on those promises!
Your fans are following you because they believe that you have something to add to their lives. If you aren’t consistently showing them why they followed in the first place, you will see your fanbase dwindle. It’s not personal, people just want to follow businesses and people that make their feed better. So, before focusing on immediate results or the next thing you should try, just get your content on the internet for your fans to see and don’t let a month go by before posting again!
If this blog helped you, you should check out our last entry- Is your website mobile-friendly. The Pipeline team loves helping businesses improve their social media presence. Follow us on Facebook for more marketing tips and blog posts from us. 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
Senior Social Media Community Manager
Pipeline Social Media
