Avoid These 10 Mistakes When Using Social Media For Business So You'll Be Successful

Many people have been active in many social media, including business owners. Due to the many users they have, social media can be an attractive tool for marketing your businesses.

At the same time, lots of business owners complain social media marketing is either frustrating or doesn’t work. 

Not a few become discouraged quickly by the negative results their social media marketing campaigns have.

In today’s article, we’ll learn to avoid the 10 mistakes when using social media for business. 

We’ll also provide advice for you to start to act on your social networks and see how your business can improve incredibly:

• Focusing Too Much On Yourself

One of the mistakes when using social media for business is that you make your social media all about your news, events, products, projects, and many more. In other words, you are oversharing about yourself.

Sure, your posts can be high quality, but also mind the social media and audiences’ norms. 

Keep messages without added values off from your social media. Instead, make it all about and for your audiences.

• Only Caring About Sales And Likes

Promoting yourself and your businesses maybe your goals in using social media for businesses. 

Yet, you’ve made a terrible mistake when all you care about is just your products, prices, measurements, payment methods, and likes from your audiences.

You don’t want to come as a desperate salesperson. To this end, you’d want to pamper your audiences, acknowledge their opinions, and even balance your self-promoting with helping and promoting others. 

By doing so, you build lasting friendships with your followers.

• Failing To Engage In Comments

Your followers have the capacities to provide positive and negative feedback for your businesses. 

Thus, not replying to their comments, especially on their complaints and inquiries of your products, is a recipe for disaster in your businesses’ social media accounts.

Other than handling complaints and inquiries, you should also make efforts on engaging in discussions, writing personalized messages, and sharing on other people’s content. 

In these ways, you make your interactions meaningful for your followers.

• Failing To Balance Between Posting Times And Commenting Times

Imbalances of posting and commenting times can result in either spamming your followers with sales pitches and boring updates or nobody share or respond to your posts and contents.

Avoid this mistake by using tools that control your posts in different schedules, dates, titles, and other framings, such as the Postcron. 

Also, be sure to be friendly and personable to your audiences.

• Not Showing Brand Personalities

The basic ways to show your brand personalities are to complete the information tabs on every social media your businesses are on and to make your contents’ tone speak as if the audiences are your best friends.

Thus, failing to do this can result in your audiences yawning over your content. 

So, be sure to at least upload attractive photos and make use of your social media applications to show your brand personalities.

• Not Understanding Or Applying Social Media Policies, Terms And Conditions

You will risk getting public embarrassment and endangering your businesses if you don’t understand or apply social media policies, terms, and conditions.

Those “legal” matters are not only all about tedious letters, those are the essentials to make your businesses keep going. 

So, you may want to double-check your social media contents and make necessary edits before you post them.

• Not Having Social Media Plans

Many business owners dive into the social media marketing world without having any research and development phases. 

Some others waste their time by sharing random content here and there just to attract followers who aren’t even related to their businesses.

Prevent this mistake by setting SMART goals for your social media usages. 

At least, you have specific action plans, goals, and budgets to allocate your resources in your mind. Also, don’t forget to take time in knowing the networks you’re joining.

• Treating All Social Media The Same

One of the common pitfalls business owners make in their social media campaigns is registering their businesses in all possible social media accounts.

This results in not only the inability to sustain the entire social media accounts or speaking the wrong languages to the audiences but also in treating all social media the same.

To avoid this mistake, start by acknowledging that every social network has their unique customs, languages, audiences, and types of contents. 

Also, begin with focusing on one or two social media channels before expanding to other social media channels.

• Treating The KPIs In Wrong Ways

The KPIs in social media marketing campaigns don’t only include the growth of followers. 

Instead, there are also other KPIs to consider, such as the impacts of your content in your different social media accounts.

Treating the KPIs in wrong ways doesn’t only mean measuring the wrong KPIs, but also wants to control the whole metrics. 

Learn and understand the different measurements of KPIs that are suitable for your businesses to avoid falling on this pitfall.

• Being Vulgar, Obnoxious, Confrontational, Or Misleading

Social media can feel like a popularity game, even for business owners, that it can be tempting to be less authentic, talk lowly of your competitors, or attack them. 

Yet, doing so will hurt you and your brands’ reputations, especially in the long run.

Make sure to have self-control over yourself to avoid unnecessary venting or airing your grievances.

You should do this especially if you’re managing huge numbers of staff on your social media accounts. 

If you belong to such groups, you should also set up training and guides on your expectations of what should and shouldn’t be posted.

There are still dozens of common mistakes done by business owners apart from these 10 mistakes when using social media for business.

Still, when you follow the advice of practicing the social media best practices, you’ll benefit from creating thriving and engaging communities on your social media. 

You move to the right path when you avoid these 10 mistakes when using social media for business.