Social media has fast become a necessity for all brands who want to reach out to their target audience simply because the majority of consumers login to one or more social media platforms every day.

Social media doesn’t have to be overly complicated or difficult to use but if you’re doing any of the following things, you need to rethink your strategy.

Mistake 1: Stretching your brand too thin

If you want social media to work for your brand you need to be active and engaged on a regular basis. This means that you should only sign up on platforms that you know you can maintain on a very regular basis. Signing up on several social media platforms and then only having the capacity to post once a week on each of them is not going to get you the best results. Rather sign up on one platform and put all of your resources into reaching your target audience there.

Mistake 2: Choosing the wrong platforms

First off you need to be sure that your target audience is actually present on the social media platforms you’re considering otherwise what’s the point? Secondly, the platforms you choose need to fit in with your strengths as a team. If your brand can’t offer any enticing visuals or you don’t have a designer or marketing expert who can help you create amazing visuals, signing up on a site such as Instagram or Pinterest might not be the best decision for your brand. Whatever platform you choose, make sure that you have the right resources available to create the best content for that specific site.

Mistake 3: Overlooking objectives and metrics

How do you gauge whether you’re achieving online success if you don’t have anything to measure it by. Before you start your social media journey it’s important for you to set some objectives and decide how you will measure your success. If you’re not doing this you might be wasting a lot of time, money and resources.

Mistake 4: Failing to engage

Social media is all about connecting and sharing so if your brand is simply posting a few links to articles every week and you’re not engaging with your audience, you’re probably not going to see the results you’re hoping for. A social media user enjoys supporting brands that take the time to engage with them like people and don’t come across as constantly trying to sell to them. If you can help a user relate to and enjoying communicating with your brand, they’ll naturally want to support you going forward.

Mistake 5: Forgetting to promote

While organic search does play a role, if you really want to make an impact on social media you need to tell people where to find you. Use your website, email signatures and newsletters to tell people that they can connect with you on social media too. If you run an eCommerce store, you could even look into offering support on social media to really start engaging with your audience.

Mistake 6: Not having a content plan

A content plan is crucial to your social media strategy. It will help you achieve a good balance between visual, text-heavy and promotional content. If your page is overly promotional, you’ll drive users away and if you aren’t posting content that can be used to encourage engagement then it won’t benefit your brand in the long run. You could even start including social media ads and promoted posts in your content plan in order to extend your reach.

Being successful on social media is all about getting the basics right first.