Social Media Marketing is a component of any complete digital marketing strategy. There are times we talk to small business owners that do not understand the complexity of social media marketing and they quickly assume that their digital marketing strategy is wasted. Wasted time. Wasted energy. Wasted money. Something broke within the strategy and execution.
Possible Reasons Why Your Social Media Marketing Does Not Work
When executed correctly, social media works to increase brand visibility, increase conversion rates and is a great way to introduce an audience to your products and services. Let’s examine some potential reasons your social media marketing is not working for your business.
• Lack of a Social Media Strategy: If you start without a strategy you might as well pack it in. Posting on various platforms for the sake of posting in an exercise in futility. Your marketing efforts no matter what they are will ever work. Trinity Web Media believes this to be the number one culprit that contributes to failure. If you think you fall into this category, stop a moment, and ask yourself: Why are you posting? Who are you trying to reach? What problem are you solving for your audience?
• Inexperienced Social Media Team: Don’t get me started on this topic. Just because you have an employee behind the scenes who knows how to post to Instagram, Facebook or the like, it does not mean they should be touching your social media marketing. Liking to post on Instagram does not make you a professional that can comprehensively understand a strategy. Uh-oh, there goes that word strategy again…
• Lack of Understanding: Before embarking on any digital marketing efforts, it’s important you understand the platforms to which are you posting. Without a complete understanding you are at a loss. We suggest learning about user behavior, user engagement and audience.
• Poor Content: Think about this point like this: If your price-point for products is X, does you imagery and content reflect it’s value? Are the captions inane and make no sense? Do they speak in a way that diminishes the product. If you want someone to pay $8 for avocado toast I would use words that reflect its value. HINT: Yummy, delish and other baby speak will not get the job done. Also, if your photos look like shit, your audience will think your product tastes the same.
• Chasing the Wrong Metrics: Stop chasing vanity marketing metrics. Instead of chasing the number of followers focus on engagement. Stop worrying about likes and concentrate on click through rate (CTR). If your social media team does not understand CTR refer back to bullet point two.
• You Do Not Know Your Audience: This falls within not having a basic strategy. If you cannot identify your intended audience by behavior and not demographics you will never be able to connect with anyone in a meaningful way. (Learn How to Identify Your Ideal Audience)
• Your Selling Too Much and Not Solving Problems: People want to work with people who can solve their problem that they know, like and trust. Stop selling and start being cognizant of what problem you are solving for your audience. Remember, the fact that they do not have what you are offering is not their problems. That’s your problem — not theirs. Focus on being a problem solver. Always ask what problem are we trying to solve and how can we make someone’s experience, life, time etc. better. (WordCamp San Diego Talk: Stop Selling Start Solving Problems)
If you start off by working with professionals that understand the above points and I know your social media marketing will improve instantly. No one likes to be left behind and it sucks to suck, so adhere to these principles, put them in play, go do and stop sucking at social media marketing.
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