Social media has come a long way since it first came on the scene. What started out as a way for friends to connect over the internet and share snippets of their lives has now morphed into an opportunity for businesses to reach new customers and increase their brand awareness. Through informational posts and social media advertising, it’s now possible to boost your brand visibility and sales through these immensely popular platforms.

However, that doesn’t mean that social media doesn’t require a strategy. In fact, these platforms might be more difficult to navigate than you realize. And if you make the following social media marketing mistakes, you might end up spending a lot of unnecessary time and money with no real payoff.

Being Overly Promotional

When some people think about social media marketing services, they assume they’ll only be creating posts to promote their products. While advertisements that run on these platforms can certainly be promotional in nature, that can’t be the only thing you post. While product or service promotion does have a place in the social media content you create, you’ll also need to build brand trust through authenticity and valuable information. Most social media marketing experts recommend the “4-1-1” rule when finding or devising content to post. For every promotional post you share, you should also post one piece of reshared content and four pieces of relevant content that doesn’t involve directly promoting your business or offerings. This can give you the balance you need to drive traffic to your site without overwhelming your followers with the constant hard sell.

Not Distinguishing Between Platforms

Social media does allow you to get more out of the content you create. Cross-promoting an interesting blog post you wrote on your Facebook page or alerting your followers to a new offering through your Instagram stories can be highly beneficial. However, these social media platforms are not interchangeable. Therefore, you need to develop a different strategy for each one, rather than syncing up your updates between all of the major channels. Although Facebook dominates with 65% of social media user shares, you shouldn’t neglect different platforms for the sake of one account. Fortunately, these platforms do provide analytics tools that can give you insight into what’s working (and what isn’t) for each of your strategies.

Failing to Engage With Followers

As any social media marketing agency will tell you, you can’t just “set and forget” your Facebook or Instagram posts. While automation can make your life easier, you can’t rely on it completely — especially when it comes to engaging with your audience. Social media marketing provides you with a unique opportunity to interact with prospective customers. For many web users, the replies they receive to their comments or direct messages on social media can make all the difference in how they perceive a brand. It’s important to personalize these interactions and make them a pivotal part of the customer service you provide.

Aside from simply ignoring the need for social media, these are some of the most prevalent problems business owners find themselves facing when they attempt to handle their own marketing. But you don’t need to take that burden on yourself. For more on how we can provide the social media management Phoenix business owners depend on, please contact us today.