Social media is now a major part of any business’s marketing strategy. It’s important because millions of people across the globe use social media on a daily basis. These millions of people use social media to keep in touch with each other, but they also shop, look for jobs, and explore content related to their interests and hobbies.
However, just using social media for marketing isn’t enough. It’s important to use social media marketing the right way or you might end up alienating users instead of turning them into your customers. Ask yourself the following questions to make sure you’re approaching your social media strategy the right way.
Who Is My Target Audience?
A common mistake is thinking that absolutely everyone is your target audience. No product or service is going to appeal to every single person in the world. You’re more limited by age, location, and more than you may think. It’s important to understand who your audience is in order to create content for them. Knowing who they are is the right place to start.
Your audience is made up of people who are interested in buying your product or service. You do need to understand the demographics that make up that audience, but it’s important not to operate on stereotypes. For example, if you’re marketing on Instagram, you’ll have a lot of users between the ages of 18 and 34 in your audience, because that’s primarily who uses Instagram. That age group consists of Millennials (22-38) and Gen Z (6-24). However, if you choose to market to the stereotypes of either group, your marketing won’t be very successful with people who fit those categories.
Can I Buy Followers?
Buying followers may seem like a good idea. For a small price, you can increase your follower count by thousands. Despite what may seem like gains, however, this can actually hurt you in the end. To start, none of those bought followers are real people. One of the reasons you want followers in the first place is so that those followers can become customers. Fake accounts affect your follower numbers, but then do nothing after that. They’ll never become customers.
Plus, bought followers can actually end up harming your social media account by manipulating the algorithm. Your real followers won’t see your content as much because fake accounts actually prevent the social media platform’s algorithm from promoting your content. You shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that you shouldn’t want to focus on follower numbers when what you should really be focusing on is conversions. Fake accounts won’t help you with that.
What Should I Post?
Content can be one of the trickiest parts of a social media marketing strategy. It’s important to make sure your content is interesting to your target audience. But at the same time, it’s important to set the right tone. A lot of companies, even big-name brands, make mistakes with this.
If you’re too business-like, that can sound boring. However, too casual can also fail. Attempts at humor can end up coming across as tone-deaf or offensive. Being offensive on purpose is definitely a social media sin. Humor that relies on sexist or racist jokes may appeal to some, but it’ll alienate even more people. It’s important to strike a balance between too formal and too edgy, one that will actually resonate with your audience and won’t come across like parents trying too hard to get teenage kids to think they’re cool.
Why Is Responding to Comments Important?
Another mistake that many companies make is not engaging with their audience in the comments. Comments play a huge role in the algorithm on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Responding to those comments can help boost your engagement significantly, in turn affecting the platform’s algorithm positively. Plus, it helps your audience to like your brand even more when they see that your company cares enough about them to respond to their comments.