Making mistakes on social media is to be expected. Making mistakes is how you learn how to improve, right? But if I can ever help you avoid mistakes and make the path to “success” (however you define it), a bit easier, then I will! Let’s dive in.
Mistake #1: Not setting clear expectations – Your company has office hours, so should your social media. I recommend being clear about expectations on your page. A great way to do this is with an auto-responder in the messaging capabilities. There are third-party tools that can do this as well. If someone messages your page at 10pm, they should not expect you to respond immediately. But unfortunately, they do… So using an auto-response could solve this problem by saying, “Hi there, thanks for your message. We respond to messages between the hours of 8am and 5pm CST. If this is an urgent need, please call #XYZ.” See? Simple. Now they know you aren’t ghosting them, and you don’t have to feel attached to your phone to respond to messages.
Mistake #2: Deleting comments – Never delete comments. People will ALWAYS call you out, and it turns into a complete mess. Instead, hide negative comments so only the person who wrote it, and their friends, can see it. Better yet? Address the comment publicly. If one person has a comment like that, there’s a chance others do too.
Mistake #3: Not having a clear call to action – We assume people know what to do, whether that’s click a link, save the post, etc. But they won’t do it unless we tell them. The images below are a great example. They are very similar in content, but the post on the left had a clear call to action “save this post,” and the post on the right did not. Even though the post on the left reached 200 less people, it performed better overall because of that simple CTA.
Mistake #4: Too much content to outside links – The algorithm favors content that causes the audience to stay on the platform longer, like video. So anytime you are posting links to content outside of the platform, that content will likely not perform as well. You can still do it, just don’t overdo it.
Mistake #5: Giving up too soon – Just because your first post flops doesn’t mean your whole social strategy needs to go out the door too. Give it time. Everyone has a different standard for how long content should be tested. I personally like a testing window of 90 days.
Mistake #6: Using obscure hashtags – Only use hashtags people are actually searching and following. My favorite example, while not for business, is when a mom hashtags the name of her child. Unless that child’s name is #JenniferLopez, no one is going to search and follow #MadisonJane or whatever the child’s name is. In the business world, do hashtag research!