Five Mistakes Many Social Media Managers Make
Improve your inbound marketing with these simple fixes
BY CHANTEL GUERTIN, GHOST BUREAU PARTNER
Is your social media living up to its potential? Most companies have some social media presence–but common mistakes prevent their posts from becoming what they could be: a key component of the overall marketing strategy.
Mistake #1 Not featuring the people who actually work at your company.
Stock photography feels like stock photography. Read: inauthentic. When they’re viewing your brand’s content, viewers want to see real people who represent the brand being promoted. Actual people who are employees. Whether you’re aiming to attract new customers or recruit new team members, letting the world see the people who live and breathe your business is much more effective than stock photography.
The Fix: Create short, engaging talking head or interview-style videos, which show off your key team players’ personalities.
Mistake #2 Cross-posting the exact same content on all your platforms.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest and all the rest: Each one serves a slightly different purpose, which is why no single platform has come to dominate all the rest. Different audiences use different networks to seek out different content. To effectively influence each audience, you may need to create different posts for each platform.
The Fix: Use a scheduling system or content planner to map out your posts in advance—and determine which posts will resonate on each platform. Sometimes the same content can work across multiple platforms—it just needs to be conveyed in a different way.
Mistake #3 Not tracking results.
How can you understand what’s resonating with your audience if you’re not monitoring your metrics? Your social media manager should be tracking analytics at regular intervals and tweaking strategy and content accordingly. It’s not just likes and views that matter. For example, it’s possible to track a path to conversion all the way from social post to website visit to that valuable click on the “request a quote” form. Do you know which of your posts are best at triggering conversions? And are you analyzing why?
The Fix: Your social media agency should be spending time every week analyzing the content and working out patterns and trends. Consider topics, timing of posts, platforms and style.
Mistake #4 Forgetting about interdepartmental collaboration.
Typically, the social media manager works within the marketing team, which has a set of objectives. But other departments can provide important insight into the company, issues in the industry and different points of view that are essential to grow your business.
The Fix: Make sure your social media manager is speaking to key members of every department on a regular basis.
Mistake #5 Not integrating social media with a broader content-marketing strategy.
Social media isn’t like a crockpot: you can’t just set it and forget it. Your social media should also be driving traffic to your website, where you’ve created a lot of other original content—such as videos, interviews, downloadable resources and blog posts. To create all of this material, your social media manager needs to be a journalist, a graphic designer and a video editor—or should work with an agency team to ensure you’re creating useful content in all applicable categories.
The Fix: Examine your social media and how it supports your content-marketing strategy. Then, determine what resources you may need to effectively execute with a production level that conforms to the value of your brand.
Is your social-media strategy performing to its full potential? For a complimentary consultation on your social-media and content-marketing strategy, contact hello@ghostbureau.com.
