Don't make these social media mistakes for your business

Managing social media for your brand can fill your head with endless questions. When should I post? What should I post? How do I interact with followers? How do I get new followers? How do I adapt content for each platform? Challenges like this often feel relentless. Here are a few simple pointers to help you on your way!

Quality, not quantity!

You might be tempted to offload all your ideas, plans, products, and general thoughts onto your social media streams without really considering how useful the content you’re publishing might be to current and prospective followers and potential customers.

Less is more. Quality over quantity. You’ve heard these phrases time and time again, and they’re very true for managing your brand’s social media presence. If you’re not providing useful information or something legitimately enticing, you’re just adding to the noise.

Plan what you want to share with your followers and customers and ask yourself how it enhances their life. Simply chucking up random posts throughout your working day will see posts lost amid a sea of content. If social media is part of your everyday job, you might fall into the trap of just posting during working hours. But think about it: that’s when the majority of other people are at work, too!

So use scheduling tools — Facebook does this natively, and Tweetdeck works well for Twitter. For Instagram, there are a few paid publishing tools, but it’s better to accept early on that social media is typically something that will seep into every waking hour. Scheduling content during working hours is one thing, but interacting with followers? That’s a from-dawn-‘til-dusk kinda deal.

You don’t need to be on every platform (phew)

You might be tempted to post on every single social media platform out there, but that’s not necessary. Test the waters of each and discover which works best for your business, and become a master of your preferred networks. If you love Snapchat but don’t really enjoy posting to Instagram, then that’s fine.

Don’t feel like you have to create content because you’re worried of missing out on engaging with customers. If you’re forcing out content onto a platform you don’t enjoy, it’ll show.

Every platform you manage takes up additional time that you’ll need to spend creating tailored content for. If you’re not into it, then those accounts will fade into the background with very few posts and interaction, and users will quickly see that you’ve grown lazy. And why should they care if you don’t care?

It’s better to enjoy a couple of social media platforms and set about creating amazing content for those specific places.

Sharing is caring

Don’t fall into the trap of becoming insular. You can share other people’s content, and even other business’ ideas and products, especially  if they’re local to you or appeal to a similar demographic.

Add a little personal insight to your post and highlight what the other company are doing well, and let your followers know why it’s good for them, and what benefit it can bring.

This will only help to enhance your authority and knowledge amongst your fans, and ultimately, they’ll thank you for bringing them even more helpful information.

You’ll also gain some bonus points amongst the other businesses that you interact with and share content from, and in turn, they’ll be far more likely to share your content to their audiences.

Many social media algorithms will also pick up on what you’re doing, and will reward you for sharing beneficial content in a timely fashion with the platform’s users. Showing that you know your business sector and ‘what’s hot’ and on-trend will help to cement your knowledge with new and existing followers and customers of your business.

Don’t post at random times of the day and night

Growing a following is hard work. You’ll make it even more difficult for yourself by not properly planning when you’re posting your thought-out content. If the eyeballs aren’t there, the engagement won’t be, and neither will the conversions.

You need to consider when your audience is online, and when they’re engaging most. Social media makes this incredibly easy, with each platform offering detailed insights into a wealth of engagement information.

Experiment with posting times during peak and non-peak hours, and before long, you’ll start naturally recognizing a pattern for when content gets the most attention.

However! Always bear in mind that this pattern needn’t be definitive. There are lots more factors aside from time of day that will shape the success of what you post. Weather is a big one, for example. At the time of writing, our island has seen a dragging snowy winter season followed by a couple of days of springtime sun punctuated by a lightning storm. People love weather posts! But you’ve gotta time it right. We’ll post about snow and lightning before, during, and after the storms — forecast before, our own photos during, then a summary of other people’s photos afterwards. Why? Because during these kinds of conditions, most people will stay indoors, away from the cold. And what will they be doing? Scrolling through social media, most likely!

We’ll post about sunnier weather before and after, but seldom during. Posting about the sunny weather around midday while it’s at its peak is a bit of a shout into the void, because there’s a mass exodus into the ‘real world’. It’s as simple as the fact that phone screens tend to be harder to see in the sun, and people will be away from their phones more in general. When scheduling or posting content, think about where people will be, dependent on weather, public holidays, large local events, and other key points which affect time online.

With a decade of social media experience behind us at Team Locals Media, we have lots of advice and guidance to give, and we can also offer direct help with managing your social media streams and paid advertising efforts. Click here to email us with your questions on the matter.

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