3 Not-So-Obvious Social Media Marketing Errors to Avoid on Instagram

If you want to make the most out of the social media marketing efforts, especially when you use Instagram, you will need to make sure that everything is done right. This will ensure that you win more Instagram followers and customers that you can retain for life. If you do it wrong, it will cost you dearly.

This means that you do not make any mistakes to make things happen your way. These mistakes made by the businesses are:

• Common
• Classic and
• Obvious.

Sadly, these social media mistakes are often overlooked by businesses irrespective of the fact that they are recommended not to.

Not a Mistake: Have an Instagram Business Account

The most common mistake is to have a private profile or still using a personal Instagram account when ideally you should switch to a proper business account.

OK, if you have got a business account, it’s cool but having that aspect handled is not all when it comes to social media marketing. In addition to that, you need to be aware of a few other mistakes that are not so obvious yet highly critical and avoid committing those mistakes in your social media marketing efforts as most of the business brands do.

1. Posting Just Because

You should not post just because you have to post. Social media platforms are ideally meant to the ones that allow ongoing and engaging conversation. That means you should not say anything on this platform if you do not have anything important to say. Therefore, if you do not feel inspired to share anything, do not feel compelled to do so. Don’t share it. Period.

This is because any content that feels like it is forced will be considered as fake and unauthentic not only by the users but also by the search engine algorithms.

• Do not fall into the trap of the mass of content production trend that is happening right now. This will help you to stay relevant and important to your users in social media as more and more of them are becoming excellent BS detectors and all of them have a stronger filter than ever.
• Posting on Instagram for the sake of posting only will do the opposite of what you expect from it. It is just a matter of staying relevant and that certainly does not mean you have to continue posting even if you have nothing to say and hope that it will do what you expect.

In reality, if you post when you do not need to, it will tarnish the reputation of your brand and reduce your engagement rates because the content is bound to be of very low quality. If you do so the:

• The users will not find it engaging enough and will unfollow you and
• Instagram will cease to show your content to them.

Therefore, make sure that you are intentional with every part and piece of content when you post on Instagram. This will only be possible when you operate from a well-thought-out strategy. Therefore, make sure that you plan your content ahead of time. This will ensure that you do not have to rely on the daily squirts of authentic inspiration to post.

The best approach to follow is to create a content calendar. Also make sure that before posting, you ask yourself whether or not you would like to continue or stop scrolling through your Instagram feed to watch and read what you are about to post.

Sticking to Your Marketing Agenda

It is quite natural at this point to think that you should go overboard to post relevant content. Posting on Instagram does not necessarily mean that you will need to use an inspirational quote on every alternate Instagram post to make it pretty and an organized column of similar-looking tiles on your Instagram feed.

Often it is seen that most of the businesses do it even though the specific types of posts do not the greatest rate of engagement. Therefore, do not be very rigid in sticking to your business plan and keep on posting even when these posts do not garner any engagement.

There are two specific reasons to say that this is a huge mistake:

• First, you will be crippling your creativity. That means when you get hold of one inspirational quote and want to share it, do it immediately. Do not save it for the future as that will kill the magic of real-time sharing on social media. Do not keep it for the next quote to interrupt the creative flow. It will surely restrict your content distribution.
• Secondly, this means you will not be paying attention to what matters to your business and most importantly to your audience. You should make your decisions based on the results rather than testing new and different ways always to engage your audience. This will make them bored and they will soon fall off.

Therefore, make sure that you focus on the needs of your audience more than what matters to you. Of course, you should test, measure, repeat and learn, but make sure that it is not at the expense of your users so much so that they fall off eventually and start to unfollow you. Come out of your rigid agenda and focus on giving your users what they want from you.

Maintain a Perfect Balance

Lastly, most of the businesses are found to focus too much on product promotion and not enough on social media marketing, which is another mistake that you should avoid at all costs. Indeed, sometimes your audience may not know what they exactly want from you. They may want your product or service.

However, that does not mean you will constantly promote and sell to them. This will turn them off for sure.

Therefore, all you have to do to make the most out of social media is to focus on building a long-lasting relationship with your audience that will ensure larger web traffic and greater sales prospects.