Top 5 Social Media Mistakes Your Start-up Must Avoid

by Crystal Roman, Guest Contributor

Social media marketing is an emerging process that can either make or break your brand’s online presence. However, a few small businesses often commit bizarre mistakes while executing this most efficacious marketing process.

Have you ever implemented social media marketing but fail to cultivate the expected outcomes? Or are you planning to execute this process? No matter at which phase your start-up is. Knowing the proper process and the common marketing mistakes are always beneficial for you and your organization. Here, we have provided the top five social media mistakes that start-ups must avoid to gain maximum benefits.

Starting Without Content Plan 
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The biggest mistake is to start the process without any appropriate content plan. Social media efforts rest on a strategic plan because planning helps you to eliminate the unnecessary hassles and offer more brand awareness. Always remember the popular quote from Gary Vaynerchuk:
 
“Content is the King, but marketing is queen, and runs the household. ” 

That implies you cannot leave anything behind. For enhancing efforts, you need a proper content plan. You can make it by yourself or use some extra help from essayontime professionals who can cope with any kind of writing issues. Hence, to create a foolproof plan, consider the given points.

• Know your targeted audience 
• Best process to communicate with them effectively 
• Timely measure the success of posts 
• Objective of the business 

​Poor Post Timings 
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Timing plays a crucial role in social media marketing as it’s directly proportional to the availability of the users. Alongside, every platform has its specific rules, and people should use them according. To make the most out of your social media marketing, know the norms and user’s behavior before scheduling a post. Know the best and worst posting time of different platforms through the below provided image.

Failure in Offering Quality 

With Internet access, content junk is increasing on social media platforms, and users are smart enough to avoid that. Hence, make your post informative enough so that people can’t resist them to like and share, which is the ultimate goal of your content, Right? 

If you can’t hire a professional, then try outsourcing your content requirement but never compromise with the quality of content. To make your posts more engaging, include images, videos, stats and more. Content curation is also a best option to build consistency in your posts. 

Less Engagement 

Users follow the businesses which offer the informative and interesting posts that keep them engaged. The basic rule is to keep the users engaged. For increasing the engagement, do consider the below points.

• Ask thought-provoking queries to start communication. Social media marketing world 2017 is changing with a rapid speed. Hence you have to keep a sharp eye on the trends. Follow the latest trends by building a strong connection with your friends on social platform – aka the followers. Asking some thought provoking questions is the best option to enhance the engagement. Check out the industry news websites or trending topics of the respective platform to stay updated. 
• Avoid the follow and unfollow game. Many Twitter users follow others to increase their followers and unfollow them when they start following them. It is an image breaking task, never-ever try that. Follow someone if you genuinely like their content and stick to them. 
• Encourage other followers by promoting them. Give credit to others more than just self-promoting. Excellent and informative posts are the only requirement of the users and supporting others helps your brand to get more exposure. 

Focus on limited platforms. Figure out which social media platforms work for your business and be consistent on them. Otherwise, you might lack in delivering the quality and consistency to your users. 

Not Measuring Content’s Performance

Continue working without knowing the success of the efforts is like hitting in the dark; so don’t let your efforts go in vain. Track the effectiveness of your posts time-to-time and create another plan to enhance the engagement of users. For measuring the success of your posts, you can use the below-mentioned tools, which are effective:

• Social Mention. A free search engine that provides alerts when anyone mention you and your brand.
• Page Lever. A paid tool for Facebook that helps to track the day-wise impressions to the posts.
• Simply Measured. It is also a paid tool that helps in gathering the social media data including the country-wise tweet distribution, engagement per blog post and other details into an Excel sheet.

Avoiding these social media mistakes can boost the branding process and will also help in increasing the overall traffic and conversion rate. Starting a social media marketing business is not a tough task but executing it strategically is a thing to be considered precisely.

Conclusion

Social media marketing is crucial for start-ups, so before starting, know what’s beneficial and what’s not. Committing this kind of mistakes can damage the image of your organization, hence check out the most common marketing mistakes and eliminate them immediately, if you are employing any.