What you should be doing better on Social Media

Social media has become a vital part of any communication plan for businesses, organisations and even individuals aiming to develop their brand image and grow brand awareness. It is the living, breathing representation of a brand, with every post, tweet, snap and clip unveiling a new layer of that brand’s identity, culture and values.

There’s no denying the role that social media plays in modern marketing, so much so that organisations who ignore or underestimate this method of communication are often left behind.  As Erik Qualman so eloquently put it – “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.”

Unfortunately, a poor social media strategy is just as dangerous for a business’s reputation as a non-existent one and many organisations are falling into the same social media traps time and time again. To prevent this from happening, we’ve compiled a list of common mistakes that we see businesses make over and over again and what you should be doing to avoid these.

What you should be doing better on Social Media

TIMING

What you’re doing: Posting updates at ad-hoc times

What you should be doing: Believe it or not, there are ideal times to post on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to achieve maximum reach and engagement. For Facebook, the highest click-through rates are achieved between 1pm and 4pm daily, for Twitter it’s between 1pm and 3pm Monday to Thursday, while for LinkedIn it’s 12pm or 5-6pm from Tuesday through to Thursday. Fast Company does a great summary on best times to post here.

POSTING

What you’re doing: Publishing text-only posts

What you should be doing: Always adding an image or video to support your text! You’d be surprised about how much better a post performs when it’s supported by an engaging image (we’re talking up to 53% more likes and 104% more comments on Facebook posts and over 40% increase in Twitter retweets and favourites!)

PLATFORMS

What you’re doing: Using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as the staple social media platforms for your business’s content marketing

What you should be doing: Using platforms which best reflect your target market and product offering. B2Bs should be embracing the power of LinkedIn and Twitter to get their messages across whereas fashion and homewares retailers should be utilising sites such as Pinterest and Instagram to show-off their merchandise. Research the sites that your target market is using and don’t just assume that one size fits all.

CONTENT

What you’re doing: Sell, Sell, Sell

What you should be doing: Follow the 80/20 rule. That’s post 80 percent of social, industry related content and 20 percent of content related to your service, product or business. People might come to the page for the brand recognition, but they will stay for the engaging content.

QUANTITY

What you’re doing: Clogging up the feed with numerous, repetitive posts

What you should be doing: The phrase ‘quality over quantity’ rings true when it comes to social media posting. You should be aiming to post around 1 to 4 updates per platform per week, and never more than 2 per day. Clogging up a newsfeed is the number one reason that people unfollow pages on Facebook so save your posts for when they really matter.

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