Social media newbies are likely to get confused when starting because there are so many things to learn and do on various social media platforms and sometimes they don't understand where to begin and what to do and what not to do.
From my experience, most beginners make the following mistakes and if you can avoid them you will save money, time, and frustration. Plus, you'll get good results faster without wasting your time on unnecessary tasks.
If social media is new to you, then I suggest you start by reading these 2 articles (10 Social Media Marketing Tips for Beginners and the Difference Between Digital Marketing and Social Media) and then come back for more mistakes. common they commit. People do when they use social networks.
1. Concentrating only on Facebook
Although the word Facebook has become synonymous with social networks, it is not the only social network that you can use to promote your website. For personal usage, Facebook may be sufficient, but for SEO objectives and increased web traffic, you must also participate with other social networks. If you're short on time, Google+ is your next best option.
2. Using too many different social media networks at once
While you shouldn't just focus on Facebook, if you try to engage on too many platforms at the same time, it will be very difficult to get good results. This is one of the mistakes that many people make and eventually stop believing that all social media marketing is useless and unrewarding.
So, rather of trying to gain followers on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all at once, you may start with a couple of networks and then go on to the next after your accounts have matured.
It's worth noting that after a certain point, your social media profiles will grow organically and the effort you'll have to put into each network will be less.
3. Your social media profiles aren't optimized for search engines.
In addition to the traffic and visibility benefits gained from social media, there are also some hidden SEO benefits. You can SEO your social media profiles and increase your presence on both social media and search engines.
In this way it is not so difficult, basically, you have to treat your profiles on different social networks as your website. Pay special attention to the titles, URLs, and descriptions you use, and try to be authentic in what you say and share.
4. Your website is missing the social networking buttons
One secret to success on social media, especially for beginners, is that you need to offer your users easy ways to share your content on social media. This means that social media buttons should be available on your website or blog in important places and in the right size.
There are many combinations that will work, but in my opinion, for optimal performance, we recommend:
5. Share only the content of your websites
Unless you're Seth Godin or Danny Sullivan, you can't share content from just your own websites. The main purpose of social platforms is to network with other users and sharing interesting content from different websites is the suggested way to get noticed and increase your followers.
Don't forget to follow the leaders in your niche, share their content constantly and engage with them by posting comments or mentioning them in your posts.
6. You try to grow your followers too quickly
All membership websites have rules and social networks are no exception. If you don't follow their rules, you risk losing your account and all the time you spent creating your profiles. If you don't want to read each network's policies, then the best thing to do is avoid the hype and you'll be fine.
For example, don't start adding and removing dozens of new people a day, but instead take a more moderate approach. I'd say adding/removing 10-20 people per day (on each social network) is enough to constantly grow your profiles and keep you under the radar at the same time.
If you follow a more aggressive pattern, you may receive a series of penalties (for example, Facebook may prevent you from adding new friends for 30 days, Twitter will suspend your account, Google+ will warn you, etc.) and this will slow you down even more.
7. You want to be followed but you forget to follow!
This is another common mistake that most beginners make with social media. They put all their effort into following new people or eliminating those who do not follow them and forget to follow those who already follow them.
If you don't follow people who follow you, some of them will stop following you and that is why you will see fluctuations in your follower count. There are many tools you can use to track it, and while you don't need to follow anyone who is following you, it's recommended to do so especially at first.
8. You don't know the difference between a personal profile and a company profile
Almost all social networks (with the possible exception of Twitter) have different versions for personal and business profiles. Facebook has the Facebook Business Page, Google+ has Google+ for Business, and Pinterest recently introduced Pinterest for Business.
For Facebook and Google+, a business page is owned by a personal profile, so you must first create your personal profile and then create a business page. Each network has its own rules and the important thing is to create a company page to promote your website. You can use your business profile to promote posts from your website only, and your personal profile to promote posts from other websites as well.
9. You are on autopilot or fully manual
As mentioned above, there are many tools you can use to automate almost any social media activity, but this is not recommended. Personal contact, when possible, will produce better results than using automated responses or anything else that is not human.
On the other hand, you can't do it all by yourself. If you're active on more than one network, you'll need a lot of time to post often, write comments, and interact with your followers, so you might want to consider using one tool for some activities, but not all.
I use buffering to schedule some of my tweets to free up time to work on Facebook and Google+.
10. You forget about the commitment
Social media isn't just about connecting, it's also about engagement. Do not forget that one of your goals when using social networks is to find new customers and more followers, so in addition to following people you must also interact with them. Personal contact is the most effective way to promote your business offline and this is true in the online world as well.
11. You overlook the fact that people can like or +1 your post without reading it or visiting your website.
This is something I've noticed for a while now and I'm sure people with social media experience will have noticed as well. Many times when I post a URL of my website on Facebook, I notice that there are a good number of Facebook likes but not many Facebook views for that particular page. This means that people see the post on their timelines and click the LIKE button just by reading the intro and viewing the image posted with the post without visiting the website.
I am giving this example to increase the importance of using good images in your social media posts along with catchy titles and descriptions. A post can rival if you do both of these things well and if you can deliver the message at a time when you have the majority of your followers online.
12. Believe that your posts are seen by all your followers
This is another misconception that disappoints many people. Let's say you have 2,000 people as fans on your Facebook business page. When you create a new post with your Facebook business account, it will only be seen by about 200 people, which means only 10% of your fans will see the post on their timeline. The other networks follow a similar set of criteria, and advertising is the simplest way to boost the amount of people who see a message.
13. You do not know that you can promote your profiles through advertising
Taking the initiative from the previous point, it is good to know that if you want to:
...so the fastest way to do this is to use the advertising options of the various platforms. Facebook has Facebook Ads, Twitter Accounts, and Promoted Tweets (only available in the US for now), and Google+ has the Adwords Express platform. They are easy to use, cheap and the results are more than satisfactory.
I like to use Facebook's advertising options to get more likes on my business pages and so far this has delivered great results with minimal cost.
Note: To clear up a misunderstanding, you are not buying Facebook likes or tweets, but rather you are paying for multiple views of your posts. If what you post is good, your followers are more likely to like it or tweet about it.
14. You do not use images in your posts
Many studies have shown that posts that use beautiful images will get more likes, tweets, pins, etc. This is true for all social networks, including Twitter (which some people believe is only around 140 characters long). So whenever you want to share something on social networks, make sure it is accompanied by a good quality image.
15. You don't use hashtags
A hashtag is the most convenient way to keep up with a conversation on any platform. For example, during the NBA Finals, you can search for #nbafinals on Twitter or Google plus and stay informed about the latest stories on the topic. A few weeks ago, Facebook also started using hashtags (Twitter and Google+ used hashtags from the start).
Using hashtags is simple, just use the "#" followed by the keyword you want to use. For example, the tweet for this post looks like this:
Avoid these 15 social media blunders #socialmedia #socialmediamistakes
Conclusion
Social media is a very important component of a digital marketing campaign and is a must for any marketer who wants to compete online. Newbies to social media may have a hard time understanding how each social network works, so it's very important to avoid making the 15 mistakes outlined above.
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