Don't make your business socially awkward
Social media is constantly evolving - it’s hard for even marketers to keep up! Business owners have so many other important things that come across their desks throughout the day, the updated algorithm for Facebook is not on their radar. So, while monitoring social media trends is imperative to staying up-to-date, and avoid appearing irrelevant, there are some common mistakes that people are making currently in regards to social media strategy that can be easily remedied.
1. #Overusing #Hashtags
Using too many hashtags can make you look desperate, and appear out of touch - exactly the opposite reason why you’re using hashtags in the first place. While we recommend using hashtags (you’re missing out on potential traffic if you don’t), use them tastefully, use no more than 3 per post and only use hashtags on platforms that support searchable hashtags. LinkedIn, for example, only allows hashtags to be searchable on mobile. Also, if a trending hashtag is industry-appropriate, or can be related to your business, it makes sense for you utilize that hashtag and capitalize on the existing traffic.
2. Filming Everything Vertically
As video marketers, it’s difficult for us to admit, but vertical videos do have their own purpose and place in the marketing world. We have mobile video and social media networks like Snapchat, Instagram, and Periscope to thank for this video marketing evolution. They use vertical video as their native format. For more vertical video tips, check out this blog.
But, if you’re shooting a video for any other purpose than mentioned above, hold your device horizontally. The black bars that appear at the left and right of the screen when you upload vertical video for a horizontal platform SCREAM amateur. Don’t do it! If you’re unsure, spend a couple minutes and peruse the platforms where you want to publish your video. And if you want to avoid video mistakes entirely, partner with a video marketing partner, like us, and we can establish a plan for your video marketing efforts so you’re never mocked in the digital world for your poorly produced video.
3. Auto-Posting Across Platforms
A few years ago, having the ability to schedule auto-posts took over the marketing world. Software like Hootsuite, Buffer and even Hubspot allowed you to post a single piece of content across multiple social media platforms. While this approach is super convenient, it is not necessarily effective.
Social media users visit different platforms for different reasons. Therefore, what works for Twitter will not always work on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. Auto-publishing a single piece of content across all platforms shows that your brand is lazy, and doesn’t take into account the audience’s preferences per platform, and each platform’s uniqueness. Instead, take the time and optimize your content for each platform - and keep in mind, posting each piece of content on every platform is not required.
4. Sharing Video Links on Facebook
In Facebook’s more infantile stage, we would post YouTube links as Facebook posts, but, technology has moved on from that. Take a cue from Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently stressed the importance of the platform becoming "video first”. If a platform is focused on a video-first model, you need to pay attention and post native video content to that platform.
And while YouTube still has its benefits and purpose as the second largest search engine in the world, overlooking the power of video content on Facebook is a mistake. Users engage with the automatically playing videos that are uploaded directly to the platform at much higher rate than other content, such as video link shares or posts containing photos.
5. Keeping Blog Content Off Social
Social traffic, which is website traffic that comes from your social media accounts, is a part of Google’s search ranking algorithm. So, take advantage of every opportunity to drive traffic back to your website from your social media accounts.
Share every blog you post on your website on the appropriate social media platforms, if not, you’re missing out on potential reach - you’re missing a huge opportunity to distribute your content and you’re not following proper SEO recommendations. Blog content provides fresh content and new reasons for people to visit your site.
6. Catering Exclusively to the Youngsters
Nearly every brand is trying to figure out how to market to the younger generations. While marketing to the youngsters is a grey area for many companies, don’t make the mistake that many marketers make- never go ‘off-brand’ in order to appeal to those outside of your normal demographic.
For example, a company will see a trending hashtag that is not relevant to their business and utilize it in their content - but not only will you annoy your existing audience, you will not appear authentic to the younger audiences, and they’ll see right through your youthful façade. A better option - stay true to your brand, and come up with more creative ways to market to younger audiences.
7. Making it Rain with Advertising Dollars
Aimlessly spending advertising dollars, with no real strategy for distribution is potentially a very costly mistake. Just because social media marketing can be cheap, doesn’t mean you should randomly boost posts and promote tweets.
Create a marketing strategy before spending money on social media advertising - develop your goals, understand your audience, create content based on those, and have a specific purpose in mind for each type of content, and most importantly - track your results.
8. Neglecting Social Video
If you read any of our blogs, you’ll know that video is changing the overall marketing landscape - it’s a huge trend that’s not going away anytime soon. Check out this blog, this blog, this blog, and this blog for reference, but really any of our blogs will address the popularity of video for marketing communications.
And social media is not immune to the video marketing trend - any brand that’s not creating video and promoting it on social media is missing out on a huge opportunity. We’ll leave you with a few statistics:
- 100 million hours of video per day are watched on Facebook. (source).
- Facebook and Snapchat have both surpassed 8 billion daily video views (source)
- YouTube’s 1 billion-plus users are watching hundreds of millions of hours of online video every day (source)
While video needs to be a part of your social media strategy, it’s important to recognize that businesses also need a video marketing strategy in order to create, repurpose and distribute content across platforms and avenues that reach far beyond social media. Ready to put your video marketing plan into action? We’re ready to determine your action plan.
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