Social media can be a robust platform that entrepreneurs can use to make their businesses grow. However, it can be tricky to use social media correctly.
If you are unsure if you are maximizing your social media channels, here are eight signs to look out for:
1. You Are Not Getting Referral Traffic
You should integrate your social media strategy and your SEO strategy with one another. Although social media isn’t a direct cause of your search engine ranking, it doesn’t these platforms are not helping.
However, you need to learn how to work with your social media strategy to do that properly.
Even if your post gets tons of shares, it won’t mean much for your website’s SEO efforts if it doesn’t get any high-quality backlinks. That’s why you should make it easier for your posts to reach thought leaders in your industry.
The simplest way to do that is simply by tagging them on your relevant social media posts that link to your site. It can get their attention, and you might get a backlink from it. Thus, positively affecting your SEO strategy.
2. You Are Not Gaining Followers
Although your follower count is not the end-all-be-all measure of success on social media, it’s still an indication of something. That’s why when you notice that you’re no longer gaining any followers, it might mean that you’re not reaching enough people.
You’re not posting enough, or there’s a lapse in your marketing efforts. It should tell you to fire up your marketing efforts so that you start gaining more followers. Otherwise, your account will stay stagnant.
Rework your current marketing strategy so that you will be able to reach more people in that way.
3. You Don’t Interact With Your Followers
Any social media optimization company will look at your engagement strategy with followers. If you aren’t interacting enough or at all with them, it will be a point of concern. That’s because the follower count is meaningless if you don’t have engagement.
When it comes to social media, simply posting content on there is not enough to ensure that you’re maximizing this platform. After all, you need to be social when you’re on social media to make sure that you retain the attention of the people who are following you.
If you lose their attention and feel like you’re not listening to them, you won’t get your audience to stay. How you interact with your audience is also a means for you to show potential customers what it’s like to be in your community.
When you have positive social media engagements, these same people will positively speak about your brand. Potential customers will also see these and will have a positive impression of you.
4. You Ignore Negative Comments
Another part of interacting with the people who engage with you on social media is that it’s normal to expect that you’ll get negative comments. It’s not worrisome if you get negative comments often, but how you handle it can be the point of worry.
Responding to them in an ungracious manner is the worst thing that you can do. However, ignoring negative comments or hiding them from public views is also a no-no for social media. Eventually, people are going to notice when you’re sweeping these negative comments under the rug.
As a business owner, it’s your job to understand that people will use social media to rave or rant about your brand. That said, you shouldn’t take notice of reviews that only pleases you.
People use social media for customer service because businesses can go through customer concerns a lot faster. Plus, customers will have direct access without any delays to these businesses.
If your customers have any concerns, address them, and don’t shy away from them. It will be better for your reputation when people know that you are proactive in solving any concerns or issues.
5. You’re Using Too Many #Hashtags
We’ve all seen the posts online where accounts tag their posts with unrelated hashtags to get traffic from all sorts of places. We’ve also had experiences where we look up a hashtag and find unrelated pieces of content on there.
Using hashtag strategy will confuse your readers and attract the wrong type of audience that doesn’t resonate with your brand. It would be a waste of effort and time for both sides.
Careless addition of hashtags is not the way to go and can indicate your lack of expertise in social media marketing. Instead of doing that, do some keyword research so that any hashtag that you add would be relevant to your content and overall account.
6. You Lack Brand Identity
Posting whatever content is viral is not the best way to get some traction on social media if you want to make your mark. Before you settle and figure out what you want your social media to be, you first need to ensure that you have a solid idea about your brand identity.
If you’re starting, you don’t need to have every aspect of your branding hammered out. However, you need at least a semblance of consistency to ensure that your posts aren’t just a mish-mash of random content and imagery online.
When you have a consistent type of content, it becomes easier for people to recognize your brand. Standing out can be more straightforward, and it will be much simpler to figure out which types of content you should be making.
7. Your Social Media Profiles Are Outdated
When you’re using social media for your business, you need to make sure that you should update any key business details.
If your profile description contains contact details, you have to check that these details are accurate. They shouldn’t lead potential customers to dead ends because that could be lost business.
It’s imperative that your profile contains essential business information. This includes updating this information as needed.
To avoid that issue, you should schedule a time in the future where you routinely check on the parts of your social media profile that you need to update.
Your profile picture, header, description, contact details, address, products list, and so on will all need updates. Thus, you should make time to update your social media profile regularly. Doing so will ensure that you don’t lead your audience on a wild goose chase due to outdated information.
8. Your Competitors Are Active, And You’re Not
Competitor analysis is integral in any marketing strategy, including on social media.
Your competition serves as your benchmark to indicate where your place is in the market. It also shows whether that’s good enough or not.
If you find that your competition is doing better than you in all aspects, it’s time to do some analysis.
Which of your strategies is working for you and which ones aren’t? What plans does your competition employ to get the success that they have? What are their lapses? All of this information can help you spruce and level up your social media strategy by a lot.
Conclusion
Social media is a powerful tool when you utilize it to the best of your abilities. However, it’s so easy to mess up, which is why you should look out for the warning signs listed above.
These warning signs will let you know which parts of your social media strategy are a concern so that you can improve upon them. From there, you can tweak your social media strategy so you can maximize its potential.
