Social media marketing is not new anymore. It has been around for long enough that we should all have nailed down the basics. And yet, some common mistakes are continuing to appear across business accounts. Some of these accounts are owned by companies with dedicated marketing departments; others are small businesses where social media has been dumped on someone with a list of other responsibilities.
It’s not that there is a lack of knowledge. Often, it’s the result of bad habits that have just become an accepted norm.
Here are some of the very worst.
Making every post a sales pitch
Naturally, businesses want to sell their services. That’s a given. But social media becomes a turgid bore when every post is an advert. Not every post needs to tell people to get in touch, book a consultation, or request a quote.
It also doesn’t convince people to follow the account in the first place.
That’s not to say that promotional content has no place on social media, it just means that it must share the space. Useful information, expertise, interesting observation, and other content that is useful to customers needs room on the feed too.
A social media account should build familiarity and credibility before it repeatedly asks for a sale.
Using stock photography for everything
There is nothing inherently wrong with stock photography. Nothing beats authentic pictures though, even if they were taken by a mobile phone. Relying solely on stock and AI imagery, though, creates an obvious problem.
Your business will look exactly the same as everyone else’s.
The familiar photographs of teams smiling at a laptop or the businessmen shaking hands are visual shorthand hand for “we needed an image for this post”.
Let’s be honest, your business has better material available. Actual staff, products, completed projects, customers, and day-to-day staff interactions. All that will earn you much more credibility.
Chasing every trend
Trends are useful when they are relevant. Nothing is more cringey than a business adopting every trend because everyone else is doing it.
A viral sound or meme isn’t automatically appropriate for a business simply because it generated millions of views. A marketing agency or clothing company might find an obvious connection. An accountant or commercial property firm would need a far more tenuous excuse to do it.
There is nothing wrong with being entertaining, but there is a difference between showing personality and desperately trying to look current.
Writing corporate nonsense
Some businesses appear to believe that social media posts need to sound like they were written by a board of pinstripe suits. You know the type:
“We are delighted to announce that we have successfully implemented a comprehensive strategic initiative designed to enhance our customer’s UX.”
It just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?
Social media is your direct line to real people. Communicate naturally. If the people running the business would normally say, “we’ve launched a new product”, there’s no real advantage in phrasing it like an AI thesaurus, or an annual report.
Good writing isn’t about making a business sound like they’ve raided an MBA coursebook. It’s about making it understandable.
Ignoring the people who actually respond
Let’s play spot the rhetorical question.
Is there any point spending time creating content just to ignore the people who take the time to comment?
Not every comment needs to be lengthy. Some just need a little acknowledgement. However, unanswered questions and genuine conversations should not simply disappear into the notifications tab.
Social media is a communication channel. Treating it as a digital noticeboard rather misses the point.
Forgetting that social media is marketing
Perhaps the most fundamental mistake is treating social media as a to-do-list check box instead of a wider marketing strategy.
Posting regularly isn’t strategic. Neither is getting likes or having thousands of followers. Social media should have a purpose.
It might be to build awareness, demonstrate expertise, generate enquires, support recruitment, or drive people to other parts of your business. Once that purpose is clear, deciding what to post becomes considerably easier.
The best social media accounts are the ones that understand their audience. They are the ones communicating like people in a business and not corporate robots. They give you reason to pay attention.
All of that is much harder than just filling a content calendar, but it is much more likely to produce something useful.
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