Critical Mistakes in Social Media Promotion Is social media promotion so important? Google and Yahoo search engines are promising and significant channels for promoting your business online, but there are also social networks.

A huge number of your potential customers literally "live" in social networks today: from future visitors of a fitness club or tattoo studio to those who like to immediately purchase a massager or fancy attachment for a blender, which they just accidentally saw on social networks.

Believe me, the risk that your potential buyer will not know about the existence of your website if he does not stumble upon it on the web is very high. And this means that you should devote the same time and attention to maintaining social media accounts on the net as to any other sales channel.

But how to maintain selling accounts correctly? We will not dwell on profiles that are unsuitable for driving traffic to websites because they are empty: the last update was made months ago, and most of the illustrated modules are irrelevant. The topic of our conversation today is “typical” mistakes that sellers make when promoting on social networks.

Social Media Promotion and Monetization of Likes

Before listing the main mistakes and shortcomings of maintaining selling accounts, let's ask ourselves: why do we need promotions on social networks?

Maintaining an account is a long-term daily painstaking work, which means that it is not enough to “shoot” few funny pictures. Our strategy is to attract an unlimited stream of traffic to the website, increase the number of subscribers who purposefully follow promotions, new products and most importantly real purchases of orders and services. And one of the tactics for increasing the efficiency of your profile should be investing at least a small amount of money in promoting it on social networks: prizes, gifts, and also payment of a specialist who deals with your account not from time to time.

So, starting to develop an account strategy aimed at promoting your business on social networks, we answer ourselves to the following questions.

• What image and reputation (what is serm reputation management, read in our article) do you want to create yourself on social networks?

• What should be the subscribers community who use your services (wealthy young women, parents, healthcare providers, subcultures, retailers, etc.)?

• Is your company logo recognizable?

• Where the first hundred (thousand) subscribers will come from?

• Will you need targeted (highly targeted) advertising?

• Do you intend to invest in contests and promotions?

• Do you have a content writer who creates interesting laconic captions that catch readers and encourage them to visit your solarium or choose children's toys on your website?

If you present the initial promotion of your account as a notification to all your personal friends, acquaintances and relatives with a request to like, subscribe, etc. - this means that you do not yet have a successful strategy for maintaining a page on social networks. Therefore, let's analyze the common mistakes when promoting on social networks.

Mistake 1. Annoying spam

You are mistaken if you think that every morning and every night beautiful landscapes with a wish of good shopping or good night will win over online buyers to you: it is highly likely that already on the sixth module of such, some of the users who have joined your group or page will unsubscribe from you. The reason is the congestion of the news feed.

The same applies to jokes and meme posts with funny pictures, for example, "Darling, I took your coupons to the solarium and gave out to pale people" has the right to live, but not too often, besides, it is better to avoid such well-known jokes (believe me, women who are tracking the appearance of new tanning salons have encountered such jokes more than once).

Mistake 2. Account as a feed of product labels

It is important to keep the middle ground between the quantity and the quality of posts. Your product line should not resemble a conveyor belt: it is tiring, annoying, confusing (imagine that a user, moving his eyes down the belt from top to bottom, constantly sees your offer of power tools, beginning with the same words). It is optimal to place, for example, one post in three days, with writing in untestable language and providing it with, let’s say, five photographs of models of the same product line.

In other words, the overload of posts loses in comparison with a small story about a product, after reading which, the user will be intrigued to go and visit the website.

Mistake 3. Lack of publication schedule

A selling page on social networks, in which two dozen updates appear per day, will never become readable: firstly, it is unrealistic to deliver high-quality content in such amounts, and secondly, you will visually scare the subscriber.

Your store will look more favourable if you limit yourself to posting one expanded post a day (sometimes there can be two, for example, on Friday night, if you have cooked up a nice reading captions mentioning your product). This will give the impression of serious work of your social network manager (while you are away, the manager may use the scheduled posting option).

Mistake 4. Collage of someone else's pictures instead of your own brand

Maintaining an account, the purpose of which are promotions on social networks, includes elements of web art.

This means that you should not save on the work of a professional: for a small amount, an experienced artist will make catchy, recognizable, informative and conceptual cover and profile photo for you, as well as develop a primary number of visual ad units that you can post with a given regularity.

Such solution is better than posting photos of Marilyn Monroe with your beauty salon contacts or her quote about female beauty.

Mistake 5. Unhappy pictures

Famous images, of actors and athletes, are bad advertising for your services: anyway, no one will believe that Brad Pitt comes to you for waxing.

You should take care of your own photos right away. If, for example, your hairdresser works on 3 – 4 specific brands (dyes, styling), you can reasonably use the banners of these manufacturers and brands. However, the best advertisement is your own clients, photographed with good cameras, in a good angle, ideally next to a well-groomed smiling hairdresser in a glamorous workplace, and not against the background of the same wallpaper.

Mistake 6. A lot of letters, or only advertising

It's important to combine different types of content: it engages the subscriber in to dynamics of your work.

“Booklet” photo with a story about it, a short sketch about a girl who came for a manicure, a photo of your employee's diploma participation in a seminar, a photo of a team at break, a unique module about the campaign that has begun, a small article on trends in hair dyeing - by alternating such content, you increase the authority of the salon.

On the contrary, the predominance of only product photos, only one model, only product labels, only expert articles suggests that you have nothing to tell or show.

When making illustrations yourself based on "other people's" pictures, you should master visual editing, for example, Canva.com, Fotor.com, Snapseed.com.

Mistake 7. Ignoring targeting and statistics options

You will never understand whether the users you are interested in see your profile if you do not use advantage of the targeted advertising opportunities, in other words, if you do not set clear parameters for the target audience (for example, young women from Dubai region interested in interior design, and you sell creative lamps).

The built-in analytics option installed in the settings of leading social networks is the only way to get an accurate understanding of who sees you, where subscribers come from, how they behave in your account. By analysing this data, you will surely avoid mistakes when promoting on social networks.

Mistake 8. Lack of time to view competitors' accounts

You are not the only one in the Universe and, moreover, in your segment of business and its online presence. By viewing and analyzing the pages of related enterprises and companies that are more actively visited, you can understand: are you losing in the frequency of publications, sluggish content, lack of feedback in the form of jokes and quizzes, the presence of posts that are liked by the target audience.

Mistake 9. Lack of monitoring

You do not know anything about your selling account and, perhaps, wasting your time and money on it if you do not have a list of metrics with the ability to track the growth or fall of the number of likes, reposts, comments and clicks on links.

Mistake 10. Impersonality of your company

Business is done by people, therefore, potential buyers who want to order a taxi, hire a team of handyman or buy boots online in your store need additional motivation and trust. Photos of your own team are meant to be that motivation.

If you and your staff participated in a charity event or became a “one-day volunteer” in the collective cleaning of the street where your office is located, be sure to tell your subscribers about this, providing the text with a high-quality photo, possibly with a funny overtones.

Even a bottle of perfume looks more seductive when it is captured not by itself, but in the hands of a manager offering to place an order. Remember: social networks offer less official format of advertising than a catalog site, so do not be afraid to "revive" your presence in the frame of the story about new products.

Mistake 11. Home video instead of a quality video

Many account holders offering various kinds of services and sincerely believe that a 3-second home video shot by a mobile phone can easily replace a high-quality video and, as a result, place an abundance of such footage – dark ambience, behind the scene noise and laughter - in the category “our video ".

Practice shows that, watching a video product of such a terrifying quality with heading "new balayage dyeing technique", user will prefer to find the site of another salon. The reason is purely a matter of visual aesthetics.

In other words, high-quality video content designed to increase your website traffic and, accordingly, the demand for your services requires budgetary investments. Unless, of course, among your friends there is no one who is ready to shoot videos for free.

Mistake 12. We reserve humour

Do not overdo it with humor by filling your account. Have at your fingertips a "base" of professional jokes, funny pictures-modules, as well as comic stories from the life of "stars" suitable for the situation.

It is not worth placing such content interspersed with advertising of new products, but using it in the comments, responding to dissatisfied customers, meticulous users and just trolls is very appropriate. The ability to answer the complainant with a joke works both ways for your business reputation and for the reader's desire to get to know you better.

Mistake 13. Ignoring comments

Responding to comments is an important part of the job of a social media account manager responsible for promoting on social networks, especially since a reader's venomous remark requires a witty response that will not allow the "complainer" to unleash an angry verbal battle under the photo of your product.

It is important that readers understand who exactly answers them, so feel free to personalize, for example, answer under your own nickname. It will not be superfluous for several employees to participate in communication with subscribers at once. Of course, considering that they are literate, courteous, competent, and also understand the responsibility for the corporate reputation.

Do not get annoyed when you are asked a question, the answer to which is, for example, in the attached price list. A more competent move would be to answer the subscriber once again how much it costs, and not just insert the corresponding link to a section of your site.

Mistake 14. Neglecting remarketing

You definitely need a base for remarketing - this is a prerequisite for promotion on social networks. The essence of this technology: users who have visited, accidentally or not, on your site will periodically receive an advertising reminder about it.

Why is it important? Having collected the remarketing database (for this, you just need to install a special piece of code on the social network), you will be able to constantly remind people about yourself that had previously visited your website. Believe me, even active online shoppers can forget the exact site from which the accessories they liked were delivered a day later.

Mistake 15. Lack of Look-alike

Look-alike is a profile targeting option, the task of which is to analyze the collective portrait of your subscribers.

Having an idea of the behavioral differences of people who buy something from you or read your updates, you will get an idea of what kind of user "types" it makes sense for you to expand your client audience.

In other words, through the options "Create Audiences" and "Similar Audience" you can find new subscribers in the exact region and at the age and budget in which it is desirable for the growth of your sales.

Mistake 16. Saving on paid posts

Often, especially aspiring business owners, they need feedback or reviews from leaders in your market segment. These custom posts cost money, but their placement is quite justified in terms of increasing the conversion of the site.

And most importantly, the path from the emotion elicited in the subscriber by a beautifully illustrated choker post to the act of making a purchase should be as short as possible. An inspired user should see a link-transition to the desired page of your catalog with a basket and a payment form immediately at the end of the text he has read. Social media promotion is a painstaking process.