How social media can be hurting your brand

social media

In an increasingly digital world, brands have an incredible opportunity to leverage social media in order to share their message and attract a global audience. As small businesses, this could mean greater exposure, revenue, and growth. But this could also be hurting our own brands.

There are five common mistakes that you could be making when it comes to social media and I’m going to show you how to fix them.

Platform overwhelm

Just because there are multiple social media platforms, does not mean you need to be active on every single one. Each platform will provide your audience with something different. It’s essential that you identify who your target audience is, which platforms they’re most likely to use and how they like to receive content.

Try this instead: Choose one to two platforms where you can frequently engage online and forget about everything else.

Vague messaging

Being vague with your messaging is confusing, provides no clear call to action and doesn’t give your audience much to interact with. If you’re showing up online with no real plan, it’s harder to communicate with potential customers and this doesn’t lend itself to the brand you’ve created.

Try this instead: Create a solid communications strategy. Break this down into a monthly plan, and get clear on any offers, promotions or events that could bring in potential customers and attention. This then becomes your guiding light for the type of content you share online.

Comparison

Your success is not defined by the number of likes you get on a photo, the number of re-shares your article has received, or the number of followers you have. It’s more important to have a low number of highly engaged followers than a high number of low engaged followers.

Try this instead: One of your biggest assets as a brand and business owner, is that no one will do things like you do them. Try injecting more of that into your business. It’s equally important to stay in your own lane and be laser-focused on objectives and milestones that are directly tied to your business, not anyone else’s.

Perfectionism

What often prevents businesses from engaging on social media is the fear of it not being perfect, questioning everything from the caption to the image or lighting, which usually ends up in not posting anything at all. But one of the biggest social media mistakes is being silent and unseen when your audience is sitting there waiting for you.

Try this instead: Audiences are expecting entertaining or educational content from businesses and not just perfect looking pictures. Look at showing up consistently and mixing up the type of content you’re sharing, so that you’re equally as inspired as your audiences will be.

Too trendy

The thing with trends is that they almost always have nothing to do with your business or content strategy and quite frankly, should be avoided. They also come and go, making any content you share, dated and irrelevant to your business.

Try this instead: Be relevant with the type of content you share and be clear on if it’s providing value or if it’s something that should be kept offline instead. Make the most out of your social media platforms by remaining on-brand and consistent with your brand messaging.

The social landscape has changed dramatically and I can only suspect it will continue to innovate. Now is the time to ensure your brand is leveraging social media to make it work for you, not against you. The opportunities are that presenting themselves haven’t existed in this capacity before, so, what are you waiting for?

Rachelle Saevil, Creative Director, Saevil Row Design Studio