Social media marketing is fairly easy nowadays. This ease can mainly be attributed to the automated tools made available by all social media platforms.
When you spend on promotion, these platforms earn, so they try to make the promotional process as easy and straightforward as possible.
Make no mistake; what they make easy is the way how you spend money. The strategies for social media marketing remain a skill that should be learned before you jump into marketing.
If you have jumped into the pit where competitors are fighting for the prize without any knowledge of social media strategies, the chances are that you are going to lose big time.
In this list, I will be telling you about 20 reasons your strategy is not working. There is nothing too technical involved; it is simple logic and knowledge that can be learned and practiced.
Table of Contents
1. Clear Goal
Not having a clear goal in mind and applying strategies just for the sake of it will never get you anywhere. A good strategy starts with a defined and quantifiable goal in mind.
2. Self-Centered
Being too self-centered and looking at every angle through the lenses of the company is not a good idea. Try to look at some aspects from the perspective of your customers or followers. If you do not genuinely want to help your audience, they will not be interested in anything you have to say.
3. Control Freak
Trying to control the demands and need of your audience always give nothing in return. You have to care about your client and form a bond with them, to laugh and cry with them. Without listening to what they have to say you cannot achieve anything.
4. Content Creator
You are not a content creator. It does not matter what kind of content you produce, be it videos, blog,s or a podcasts. Creating content gives a high ROI.
5. Reliance
You totally rely on your social media team and do not take any part in social media strategies. Relying solely on the team without taking part results in lower performance.
6. Online all the time
You are wasting your time if you stay online all the time chatting with every prospect and spend 40 hours each week online. In-person visits and meetings result in much higher levels of return.
7. Copy-Cat
Instead of creating your own strategy, you are copying someone else’s strategy. Remember, the strategy for each campaign is different and requires a different set of rules and expertise. No two strategies are the same.
8. Bad Investments
Spending everything on production and leaving nothing for marketing is definitely not a good idea. What good is a cure if no one knows about it?
9. Social Media As Backbone
Using social media to start and expand your business is not a good idea. It has been tried many times and has always returned as a failure. It does not matter how good of a marketer you are, How good of a strategy you have; relying solely on social media for your business will not work in the long run.
10. Misdirected Goal
If the only goal of your social media strategy is to bring in clients then it is not going to do so well in that area. Adding flavors to your strategy yields more long-lasting results. Only thinking of the next client, you will get is thinking too small in the vastness of the social media universe.
11. Websites As Personal Billboards
Using the website in a self-grandiose way leads to the loss of even existing clients and audiences. No one wants to know what your product is capable of. They are more interested in knowing what profit they can get by using your product.
12. Bad Advice
You are listening to the wrong people giving their personal opinions instead of following data given results and facts.
Making this kind of mistake is fatal for your business. You can lose all the money you have poured into the marketing and in the production of your product.
13. Return for Nothing
You are offering nothing while asking for everything in return. Try to ask someone to buy something from you in the street, and you will realize what I mean.
When you want someone to pay for something, you do not just ask them to pay for it. You tell them all about the benefits which your product can offer them and force them to a point where they ask you to sell them the product or service themselves.
14. No Presence
Advertising or running a marketing campaign online on social media without any presence is like trying to hack off your own legs.
A proper website with good standing, a business address, a mailing address… all this is required in order to add credibility to your business or service.
15. Immediate Results
When it comes to building brand awareness, long-term planning and long-term results are to be expected. Do not get hasty for short-term results if you want to build a relationship with your audience.
16. Working Yourself
You have reached a point where you have properly set everything in place, have implemented great social media strategies, and are now just sitting and waiting for a response. Bad news is that response will not come unless you actively tweak and manage your strategies.
17. Inconsistency
Not being consistent with your social media strategy is extremely harmful. Nothing can be achieved if you keep on switching your strategies. The proper way is to make an educated decision on which strategy to choose and then stick with it thick and thin until the strategy runs its course in full.
Once the running strategy runs its course, you can freely choose another strategy.
Hastily shifting strategies on the first sign of danger results in an actual danger every time. Be sure to stick to one strategy at a time.
18. Refusing Personal Interaction
Refusing to meet great marketing leads in real life and only making conversations online can give a devastating blow to your strategy. Situations are going to arise when you would have to meet people in person to further market your product. Not making interaction when you had the chance will then come to bite you.
Do not destroy yourself and hide from actual interactions. As much as online strategies are important personal and live interaction holds the same importance.
19. One Man Army
You are trying to do it all. Remember the saying “Jack of all trades, master of none” This holds extremely true when it comes to online marketing strategies.
You cannot do everything yourself no matter how good you are at each of those. This is because we only have 24 hours in a day. If a project required 48 hours or work in a day then what will you do? You are an owner of only 24 hours in one day if you live on planet Earth. This will change no matter which country or place you go to. Hire experienced people to help you in your effort or hire someone and then teach them how to help you on your own terms.
Being a one-man army might have worked for Rambo, but it will not work for you in social media strategies.
20. Know-It-All
Tying to be or acting as a know-it-all swallowed so many businesses and experts that if we make a list of their names, it would take forever. No one knows everything and so do not act like you know everything. Once you brand yourself as a know-it all you stop growing.
Many brand strategies fail just because the expert running those strategies were sure they knew everything and never considered the fact that there might have been some changes with the system algorithm or something to the same effect.
They keep on pouring money and effort and as a result, get nothing in return. Nothing of any value. There were experts who identified internet in its early days as just a fad which was going to pass within a few years. Experts identified television as something that would never be of much value.
Stay sharp and stay open-minded if you want to succeed in the ever-changing world of social media strategies.
Try to stay up to date with all the change that has been made, changes that are being made and that are scheduled to be made on the social media platform on which you are advertising.
By trying to avoid all the pitfall mentioned in this list you will be able to climb the ladder of success and reach the top in no time.
