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Today I want to share with you 3 common social media marketing mistakes most businesses make. Try to avoid these mistakes, and you will have much better success with your social media marketing efforts.
#1 Too Many Social Media Networks
Number 1 is trying to use too many social networks at the same. When you are just getting started. I see people making this mistake all the time. Why is this even a problem at all? Well it’s because you will quickly become overwhelmed with trying to keep up with all of them. I mean it’s really pretty simple.
Instead just pick one social network, and get good at it. Then, and only then move onto another one. Here are the top social media networks with the number of active users to give you an idea of where to start:
Facebook 1.2 Billion Active Users
So Facebook has 1.2 billion active users now and they are the biggest social network out there. The problem with Facebook is for business they are mostly a pay to play social media service at this point. So when you go with Facebook and you want to have success you are going to be doing it through Facebook ads. You are going to have to pay to use that social media network now. That’s not a bad thing. TRUST ME. Just know that that’s what you are in for.
Google Plus 540 Million Active Users
The second biggest social media network is Google Plus with 540 million active users. Google Plus is kind of like a blend between facebook and Twitter. Don’t count Google out because everyone that gets an Android Phone will end up in Google’s new social network. You don’t hear much about Google Plus compared to other social networks but it can be powerful. Not to mention you do get the benefits of Google’s SEO help for your posts.
Twitter 255 Million Active Users
Third is Twitter with 255 million Active users. I suggest if you are not starting anywhere that you start with Twitter and get going with them. You can get the fastest amount of traction with Twitter. Then maybe move onto Faceboook and Google plus. If you need help with twitter check out my new guide “How To Attract Your First 5,000 Twitter Followers”.
The Rest
We also have Instagram coming on strong with 200 million active users , linked-in with a 187 million, and then Pinterest kind of surprising way down there with only 40 million active users.
But the key I am trying to get here is just start with one social network. I suggest Twitter. Get good at Twitter and then when you are good at Twitter maybe move into Facebook and do paid advertising. Then after that move onto Google Plus and so on. If you try to do all these networks at once you are just going to be completely overwhelmed and confused. You are really kind of getting nowhere with using that approach.
#2 Overselling
The #2 mistake I see people make all the time is over-selling. Direct selling through social media generally does not work, so doing it just wastes your time plain and simple. Think of social media like a cocktail party. You would not just walk up to people and start selling them on your “real estate services” at a cocktail party, would you? I mean that’s crazy and nobody would expect that would even work. No, no, no you wouldn’t do that. You would join their conversation. Then when it was appropriate you mention that you do Real-Estate, and you know what? If they are interested they will ask you for more information. Social Media works the exact same way. So don’t try to oversell on social media. You are just going to get frustrated. If you are sending social media traffic to buying pages and it’s not working this is why.
#3 No Graphics of Visual Elements in Posts or Updates
Number 3 is not using graphics to drive engagement on your updates or posts. I see people get frustrated with this. They might say things like ” I post good stuff to social media all the time, how come it doesn’t get shared and liked?” It’s because they are just not using good (or in most cases ANY) graphics.
Go and look at your Facebook feed right now. What kind of posts jump out at you? It’s the ones with the most interesting pictures. Not having graphics in your social media updates and posts is a huge mistake. Look at this graph that I pulled from emarketeer:
It shows the sharing of posts from Facebook worldwide back in March 2014, and honestly I don’t expect that these have changed very much. But look at photo sharing. It’s monstrous. Post with photos, get viewed and shared more than anything else. So whenever you post on social media, make sure you put a picture in there. As you can see including a simple image will cause your post to get viewed and shared a lot more.
So there you have it, 3 common mistakes you can avoid to get better results with social media for your business. Just remember to keep it simple. Only work on ONE social network at a time. Don’t oversell. Use Images in your updates. Do these 3 things and you will get better results from your social media efforts.