We hear it all the time: “We’re pouring a lot of time/effort/money into social media, and it’s just not working.”
It could be any number of reasons why social media isn’t working for your business, but here are the five most common reasons—in our opinion—social media just won’t work.
Tactics instead of strategy
We made this reason number one on purpose. Too often, we watch people get frustrated with social because they signed up for an account because they thought they should, instead of rooting their reasons for having an account deep into their existing marketing strategy.
Social media should always be the extension of a purposeful and well-researched marketing strategy. And for some businesses, social simply might not make sense to help them reach their goals.
The other side of using social as an afterthought? Businesses either very quickly run out of content, or post irrelevant content, which is a surefire way to lose an audience’s attention.
Numbers instead of the right audience
This mistake was easier to make in the early days of social, when spam-like efforts were used to get anybody to like or follow an account. There was pride in the numbers game, even if it meant that most of the audience didn’t give two hoots about your company.
We’d much rather see a client succeed with a page of 2,000, highly targeted, curated and engaged followers than grow frustrated with a page of 200,000 “followers” who never interact with your content (or buy).
So feel free to play the long game here, and win your followers over one at a time.
Sales instead of engagement
You’ve been on those pages or followed those accounts that only blast their latest promotions…or worse yet, they have no promotions and instead link endlessly to products you’ve never heard of or aren’t ready to buy.
This is not to say that social media efforts can’t lead to sales (it certainly can!). Content on social, however, should help to meet customers at nearly every point of the sales cycle and not just when they’re ready to buy.
This means you might have to post educational and awareness content, show a quick how to or even link to or promote someone else’s content if it helps to showcase your brand better and helps your customers more.
Visible engagement instead of data
Not every member of your audience will visibly show you their engagement on your social media channels. If you’re banking success only on comments, Retweets, shares or likes—visible engagement—only, you might feel as though your efforts aren’t working.
Instead, look at a mix of both quantitative and qualitative data to track and measure your efforts. Google Analytics will allow you to see who is clicking through to your website from social, while other metrics, like impressions or view length will show you how much or how long a viewer is interacting with your content.
Free instead of paid
Gone are the days when you could post something from your business page and automatically have it reach everyone in your audience, for free.
Even $5 spent strategically on the right posts can help your message be more impactful and get its rightful place in someone’s feed. Yes, paying for this placement can be frustrating…but so can creating great content and having no one see it.
To be most impactful, keep a mix of both organic and paid content on your accounts.
Those are our top 5 reasons why social media doesn’t work. Contact The Karcher Group to learn more about how we can help your business with social.
