The 5 Mistakes That Are Stopping You From Crushing The Social Media Game

Here’s How To Fix Them & Start Winning

Yash Bhardwaj
Digital Dominators
6 min readMay 17, 2017

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You’ve realized the immense potential of social media for your product and have decided to go for it. Months pass by and you’re stuck only with a few hundred followers, who are your friends who follow your page. You then figure out you need to run Ads and you don’t mind investing some money, hoping that this will gain some fans. Who could become potential customers. But what happens is months pass by and more or less you’re at the same stage since you started. If that sounds like your story then today is the last time you’re gonna hear it. So step by step let’s analyse what could go wrong. You could have one or many of these but go through the entire list.

1.You Don’t Have A Social Media Strategy At All

You’re wrong if you’re wondering what could a social media strategy be for sites used by teens to share memes. Brands of 2017 are using effective strategies to tap their potential online. They’re not only building their audience but also converting them into customers.

In simple words a social media strategy is all about knowing your audience really well and engaging them through the content they wish to see

So incase you’re wondering how to build a social media strategy, you need to take note of all points I mention. By the end of this article I can guarantee you that you can build one by yourself. You can even hire someone from fiverr for as low as $10

2.You Don’t Know Your Target Audience

“Don’t Sell Ice To Eskimos”

A target audience is narrowing down your type of customers into a final category. Where at the end you'll be with a group of individuals who'll buy your product without any hesitation.

- If you sell tea, your target audience is working adults who have a lot of stress which is a problem you are solving.
-If you are an online tutorials, your target audience is students, but what kind of students? Students who have bad grades because they will need your tutorials

Defining a target audience will help you in making more compelling content as you’ll know whom to perform for. Also it will provide you clarity in many other fields like finding the right influencers, making video ads and so on.

How To Find Your Target Audience?

  1. Know what problem your product is solving.
  2. Narrow down an age group to which it’s the most relevant.
  3. Further narrow down the group to a specific set of individuals who would definitely use your product or buy something from you if it was given at the right price.
  4. There isn’t any formula, just keep eliminating and repeating the process until you find a good target audience that is beneficial for your business or product.

3. You Don’t Have A Content Plan

A content plan is deciding what kind of photos and videos will your page post? What theme will they follow? How do they look? Who are they aimed it? and many other metrics that give you clarity about what to post and when to post.

How To Build A Content Plan?

  1. You need to know your target audience. This is important because you will alter your content as per the audience likes. I’ve explained in the second step how to build one.
  2. Your content plan should be 95% generic content and 5% of your products.
  3. Have you ever seen Reebok or Nike talking about their products how well they’re built or the details? No Right? Instead they focus to build motivational sports type content and place their product at the end. This works because it’s relevant to their target audience, the sports people
  4. You need to learn how to associate your product with some other content that your audience loves because the harsh reality of life is everyone hates ads! People will start buying your product because of the content you impress them with. You can’t keep pasting links of your amazon page everyday.
  5. Now what good content means that it’s well written or designed or produced, it should be something that people would like to share with their friends. The key to social media growth is creating stuff that people want to share with their friends and family
  6. Good Content becomes great content when posted at the right time. A joke about Christmas would work the best on 25th December as compared to the other days. So you need to figure out the right timings when your audience is most active (Check Analytics! duh) and keep in mind the trends and practices of your platform.

This step is really simple but still if you have a problem you can take help from fiverr. Also I keep suggesting fiverr because it’s cheaper than hiring a social media executive who will eat up your money.

4. Looks

This is the digital world and looks matter here. You cannot look like a 15 year old teenager who posts tumblr GIFs. You need to look like a professional brand. Good looks ensure quality, guarantee trust, provide a unique identity for your brand and so on. Why do you think Apple Google And Samsung spend so much on looks and feels ? So in what parameters do you need good looks when it comes to social media?

  1. Your Logos and Headers — These set the initial imprint in anyone’s mind when the visit your page for the first time, so make sure your facebook cover, twitter header, instagram display picture all look dope.
  2. Your Content — This also needs to look unique because from an aspect that is what will make you unique from others. Another aspect could be good looking content conveys the message easily and people remember it for a long time

The way of producing great looking content is easy, hire a graphic designer or get stuff done from a freelance person who will keep your social media slick! Obviously you could do it yourself too!

5. Collaborations With Influencers

It just means you’re paying a douchebag to post about you because his followers are your target audience.

How To Find Influencers

  1. There are a few websites you could pay to get the list but it’s actually more simpler doing it manually. Just go to your personal account and search for keywords relevant to you.
  2. Next thing, influencers could be anywhere, facebook, twitter, instagram or even YouTube. You need to spend an hour just digging up, the people who appear first are the one’s you need to grab.
  3. Communication — This is a skill you will have to develop, the meaning is you can’t just send a message to someone “Hey! Can you share this” obviously why would he? You’ll have to show him what he could benefit from it or offer money.

So the more you collaborate people, the more diverse audience you will have which is good for your business.

Conclusions

  1. It’s all connected, you need to show your target audience great content through influencers to gain followers or get leads.
  2. It’s a tough process. It will not start happening in a single day, many people won’t agree to share your stuff, your first few logos will suck . But you need to keep hustling the right direction.

So whatever you read today was a fraction of what digital marketing is all about! I’d highly recommend you learn the nuances of it as it’s gonna benefit you in a lot of ways. If it’s not your area of interest but you still want to reap the fruits, hire me on fiverr and i’ll make a killer strategy for as low as $10

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