Stagnant. Dormant. Lifeless. If these adjectives sum up your current social media performance, then you’ve come to the right place. In an age where everyone, and I mean everyone, including your nan, has a smartphone and access to the internet, there is no reason for your brand to be inactive on social media networks.
So, you’ve taken the facts into consideration and you’ve seen how other brands such as JustEat and John Lewis use social media successfully. You’ve created Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts as your starting platforms and created some content. A few months pass and you’ve had a few of your friend’s like your page and a couple of your clients/customers, but other than that, nothing. Your Social Media Campaigns are failing, but why?
1. Engagement is lacking
Followers are the key to any successful Social Media account. False. Engagement is one of the best measurements to use when assessing your online performance. If your page has 100,000 followers and your last post received 3 likes and 1 comment, it’s time to re-evaluate your audience and switch up your content. Let’s take it back to square one and look at who your audience is. If you’re focusing on a younger audience, make your content colourful and add emojis – test different image templates and ask questions related to their lives or what they want to see. Whereas, if you’re targeting a middle-aged corporate audience discuss current topics related to them and add interesting and knowledgeable facts to your posts. Most importantly, create a brand identity and add personality to your posts. A user is more likely to engage and comment when they feel an emotional connection to an account. All users are human, just like yourself – that’s important to remember when writing your posts!
2. You’re spending too much time on social media and gaining no results
If you’ve started your Social Media, you understand how time-consuming building your audience and network can be. While it’s important to put hours into your account and engage with your followers, if you’re spending too much time on your account and seeing little return, you might be doing it wrong. Once again, one of the best ways to judge if your content is working or not is to take a look at the data and evaluate your engagements. If you have little to no engagement on your content, it’s likely that your audience is not interested. You could easily spend hours a week creating content and posting 5-10 posts a day, but without meaning and thought behind your content, these posts are drowning before they’ve even hit the water!
The key to solving this issue is to spend your time wisely. A study shows that 64% of marketers spend on average 6 hours a week running social media accounts. In that time, they will research, create high-quality graphics, study which times are best for posting and engaging with users! While this may not seem like a large amount of time, spent wisely, each minute on your account can have an impactful effect.
3. Your branding is non-existent
In our everyday lives certain sounds, colours and images make us think of adverts we’ve seen or businesses that we’ve engaged with. When this happens, it’s proof that a company’s branding has worked. For example, when I see a giant yellow sign, the first thing that comes to mind is McDonald’s. Today McDonald’s is one of the largest fast-food chains globally. But, when it started in 1955, only a few people knew of its existence. Through investment and consistent branding, the food giant became a household name in no time!
To combat this issue, you need to do the following things: brand your pages, brand your images and brand your hashtags. So, step 1 – Make sure your profile and header photo on all networks contain your logo and brand colours, if your business uses a specific font, use that too. Step 2 – Create some basic image overlays and templates that stick to your colour scheme and contain your logo. These templates should then be used in your posts to keep a consistent theme. Step 3 – Finally, find a branded hashtag that will become well known that you can use in your content.
Once you’ve followed these 3 simple steps, you should start to see improvements!
4. Sales. Sales. Sales. What’s in it for your followers?
Once again, bouncing back to my point about your audience being human, you need to think about what they want to see and what’s in it for them? If you came across an Instagram account that posted sales after sales, would you follow them? The key to generating an audience is by adding value to a person’s timeline. While it is important to use Social Media to raise awareness of your product or service, use the platform to raise brand awareness. By adding personalisation you can create an emotional attachment between your audience and your content. For example, You’re throwing a celebration for your businesses 5-year anniversary, take some team photos and share them online. You might be surprised by the results!
One of the best ways to add value to audiences timeline is through regular competitions and giveaways. If a user knows that you hold competitions where they can win something of value, they are likely to follow you to keep updated. Once an audience is aware of your page and has engaged with you before it’s likely that they will stay tuned and visit your website.
5. You’re focusing on the wrong audience
No matter how fascinating your content might be, if it does not resonate with your target market and engages them, it will not be successful. A key mistake that many businesses often make is that they create content that they like, not what their audience likes. Eventually, this will show when you start attracting the wrong people. While Social Media should be creative and you should express your personality and post things that you and your team members like/have interest in. If your main target audience does not engage and has no interest, you need to reevaluate what you’re posting.
A good way to gain a better understanding of what your followers will engage with is by conducting polls online (you can do this on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram via their stories option). Ask them questions like, “what do you want to see more of on our page” and then list 3 or 4 different options that you could incorporate in the future.
Additionally, one of the best and clearest ways to learn more about your audience is by looking at your social insights, all networks have these and will tell you about your audiences age, location and gender. Once you have this information, you can adjust your content accordingly. Whether you should use more emojis or more factual/informative language, looking at your audience will help you to identify these areas of change and improvements.
6. Overlooking the Value of Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing. A fairly new term which has been overlooked by many. This is very strange as the concept of endorsements and using popular figures to drive sales has been around for, well, since the dawn of media. An influencer is defined (on Google) as:
“A user on social media who has established credibility in a specific industry. A social media influencer has access to a large audience and can persuade others by virtue of their authenticity and reach.”
If you take away the words “social media” you are left with someone who has a large audience and can persuade others to buy a product or join in on something. Could you compare this to someone with a high social standing such as a public figure? Of course! For years we have watched popular people promote products in magazines, on billboards and on the telly. We’ve listened to people tell us how amazing something is and how it’s “changed my life!”. So why not use something that Nike, Dove and Head and Shoulders (to name a few) have used over the years, and just switch up the TV for Social!
After hearing that, it’s clear that you are missing a trick. But don’t worry, it’s easy to drip your toes into Influencer Marketing. As long as you have a product of good value and some additional funding to contact a marketing agency to find a pool of relevant, quality and professional influencers, you’ll be on your way to mastering the art of Influencer Marketing!
7. You can’t explain how you’re different
Standing out from the crowd. It may seem simple enough, you’ve got a cool brand and you operate differently to others (so you say). But, your online presence is telling people different. If you are having trouble distinguishing how your content and approach is different from your competitors and other accounts then your audience probably has the same issue. That can make it difficult to retain and gain new followers, as you’re not giving them a reason to stay or follow you.
To solve these issues, you need to showcase your personality and promote your USP’s. What makes your brand different from the next? Write it down and promote it every chance you get! In today’s world, it is easy to set up a business, but it is hard to have your own voice. Use Social Media as your platform to express your brand and connect with other users. In turn, this small addition of uniqueness will help you to gain new followers, raise brand awareness and hopefully generate a community of loyal and engaged customers.
8. You’re not tracking your results
After you’ve posted your content, are you monitoring engagement, reach and impressions? If not, that’s where you’re missing a trick! By simply looking into your insights and seeing which piece works the best, you can improve your knowledge and implement that newfound information into future content!
Additionally, you should be using Google Analytics to look at peoples bounce rate. Just because users are clicking through, does not mean they are staying! This could mean a few things, for example, your content could be misleading or the people on your page are not relevant or your landing page is poor. Taking a look at your analytics can soon help you to decide where the issues are and how you can solve them.
9. There’s no call to actions, what do you want?
The idea behind creating content is that someone will engage with it and take some kind of action, whether that’s a like or a link click. If you do not include a call to action, how do people know what you are expecting them to do? If your objective is to increase your website traffic, make sure you include such phrases as “Click here to see more”, “Shop online” or “Visit our website now!”. It may seem simple, but adding call to actions is one of the easiest ways to achieve your goals!
Remember, your CTA should be compelling and simple. Short, snappy content tents to gain the best reaction online. People online can be sluggish when it comes to reading content and prefer to skim over the actual text and focus more on images. Grabbing their attention is key, so using a strong CTA is always a must!
10. You do not have a strategy
Take a few minutes and think about your social media strategy. Do you have the following:
- An end goal?
- Short-term goals?
- Is there a reason why you are using a specific platform?
- Do you know how you are planning on building more engagement?
If you don’t have dependable answers to those questions, your strategy is an afterthought to you or maybe you don’t even have a strategy at all – which of course, is not good!
The way to resolve this is to take some time, sit down and start by making a list of things that your social media should achieve. Think about what your brand means and who you want to appeal to, and most importantly, do your research! By looking at your competitors, researching what networks you should be using and by educating yourself on marketing tactics, you’re already in a better standing point than what you were 10 minutes ago!
What Now?
To conclude, if you implement these 10 points into your marketing strategy, you’ll be sure to see more results on your social media accounts. Of course, things take time and there are no guarantees when it comes to the online world. However, if you implement these tips correctly, you’ll be sure to see results in the future!
For more information on advertising and managing Social Media, please feel free to contact one of our qualified and friendly marketing experts! With over 9 years of experience and over 400 satisfied customers, we’re confident that we can help you.
