Myths about Social Media Marketing.
Social media marketing has become one of the most popular ways for brands to connect with their audience. Statistics show that around 3.96 billion people actively use social media in the world and the number keeps increasing because more people are having smartphones and internet and electricity access. There are many social media platforms and the choice of the platform to use for your social media marketing depends on many factors such as your target audience, the form of content, your goals and the form of medium that works best for you. We covered this in this article: Which social media platform should you use for your business? In addition, you can check out this article that talks about different social media management platforms.
In this article, we are going to cover some of the common myths about social media marketing.. By the time you finish reading this, you will be confident about what is true and what is a lie in the social media marketing world. Being well versed with all the right details will place you in a better position to make decisions that will enable you to achieve your social media marketing goals quicker and more effectively. .
Social media marketing myths.
1. You should only focus on your target audience.
The first thing you do when setting up social media accounts for a brand is to determine the target audience. This helps you to tailor your content to suit the preferences of your audience. That is only the first step, you should also consider tactics that you could use that will appeal to the others who are not classified as your target audience.
The fact of the matter is that; in 2021, there are over 3.96 billion people worldwide who are active on social media. Your business stands to enjoy numerous benefits if you are successful in having a considerable portion of these people following you and interacting with your content.
Yeah, quality matters, but don’t underestimate the influence of a broad social following. For example, whenever your content is reshared, your SEO improves significantly and you also get access to the followers of whomever reshared your post. Infact, 79% of people say that user-generated content on social media significantly impacts their purchasing decisions. In addition, some of the people who might not be directly your target audience might know someone in their network who might be your ideal customer. On platforms like LinkedIn, when someone likes a post, that post is also shown to their audience and that means that it gets a wider reach.
Therefore, while it’s important to identify your target audience and tailor your message to reach them and address their pain points, don’t be afraid to also reach out to a wider audience that might not be necessarily your target audience. They may know someone who might know someone who might be your next customer.
2. Only post on social media during the traditional working hours.
This is definitely not true. Putting up posts only during the 8am-5pm hours may actually not work for you depending on who your target audience is. A bit of research on the hours when your target audience is most active on certain platforms is the best way to go about this. It is true that most people are active on social media during the working hours, but your target audience could also be online during the weekends and evenings once they are at home from work. Scheduling your posts to appear on their feeds during these times will give you the visibility that you seek.
Does that mean you will have to work till late in the evenings and during weekends? Absolutely not. There are a couple of social media scheduling tools that you can use to make this work such as Hootsuite, Buffer, Planoly among others (check out this article for more social media management tools) to schedule the specific times when you want your posts to go live during your usual working hours.
While still on the topic of posts, some brands do not show their audiences their human side. Even though we have all agreed that you should create content with your target audience in mind, it does not mean that you should not post content showcasing your brand’s personality. You could create content about the people in your company, or share links to content that you find entertaining even if it is not directly related to your industry. You could of course do this with a touch of your own unique brand of humor. This will have the overall effect of making you more relatable to your target audience. If the audience feels like they truly belong then that they will be more comfortable to make a purchase from you.
3. Your social media engagement will not improve if you concentrate your energy on your circle of close friends only.
For your social media engagement to grow to the levels that you have always wanted, you must come up with a well thought out strategy. Relying only on your close friends and family to comment and share will not be enough. Think about the content that you post. Is it interesting and does it provoke the audience to take action and comment? Also, the time of the day when you post is very important and contributes significantly to the level of engagement. Check your analytics to see which times work well for your audience.
4. You must respond to social activity right away.
Everyone loves it when they are replied to promptly. However, if you decide to reply to every comment and every direct message right away, you may not get anything else done (unless you work with a virtual assistant who will handle all the comments and direct messages). People are aware that you are in charge of a business. There are other issues that need to be addressed. If you respond in a timely manner, but not in mere seconds, it’s alright. The exception here is for the accounts that handle customer service. Complaints should be handled promptly and in a thoughtful way that addresses the issues that your customers might have.
5. Social media marketing tactics do not increase conversion rates.
This is not true. In fact, in today’s world, where almost everything is being done online, employing the right social media marketing tactics will play a big role in increasing sales particularly through content marketing, advertising and influencer marketing tactics. Social media is a non-organic website traffic tool, a perfect place to share your best content, and a lead generator. Employ the best-suited marketing tactics that will drive people to your products and website and your conversion will increase. You will be surprised by the number of sales that you can generate from proper usage of social media platforms.
6. Add as many hashtags as possible in every post.
The point of hashtags is to link similar conversations. It makes it very easy to search up things on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. If you take advantage of this and use the proper combination of hashtags, then your content will be more visible further increasing your chances of making sales. However, you should not overuse hashtags with the sole purpose of increasing leads. Instead, tailor your hashtags to make your content more user-friendly. This will increase the number of people viewing your content and eventually may influence positively on your sales.
7. You should spend every single minute monitoring your social media platforms.
This is impractical; you will eventually get bored and lose all the interest you had in the platform. Instead, use social media management tools that allow you to schedule posts weeks in advance and even allow you to post to multiple accounts by clicking on just one button. I had looked at the various social management tools that are available in the market and that make your social media platforms look exactly how you have always envisioned them. You can read up on all the different tools available in this article.
8. Only young people use social media.
Today almost half of the global population is online and a considerable number of these people have active social media accounts. It is a mixture of both the old and young people. It is just a matter of knowing which social media platforms each age group prefers. Check out this article to find out more about the dynamics of the different social media platforms. The fact of the matter is that your target audience is on social media no matter the age. For instance, older professionals (46 years to 55 years of age) prefer LinkedIn over other platforms; they make up 40% of LinkedIn users while 55% of Facebook users are over the age of 35 as of 2021.
9. Platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are not worth your time.
If these platforms match your goals and target audience, you should try them out. Remember, what can work for you does not have to necessarily be what works for everyone else. You can create ads and profiles that will give you credibility and awareness. Another way you can go about this is that you can also decide to use these platforms to showcase the human side and fun side of your business. This way you will appear to your audience at a more personal level and it might do wonders to your sales.
On the other hand, if you realize that these social media sites are not helping your course, you can delete your profiles and move one to better sites. The best marketers use data to identify which marketing strategy is the best and are open to iterating whenever necessary.
10. Social media is completely free marketing.
While signing up and posting content on different social media platforms is free, you might however consider hiring a social media manager to create your social media strategy and manage your channels for you. This way your channels will be more active and relevant and this will drive in more customers from your targeted audience. You can also decide to use social media ads to drive sales and reach more people. The bottom line is that social media is one of the most affordable means to create brand awareness and increase conversion rates whether you do it organically or non-organically.
To help you navigate the murky waters of social media, you can decide to outsource this task to a virtual assistant who specializes in social media management. This way, you will have less to worry about the many facts and myths that are all over the place about social media. You can get paired with a reliable virtual assistant from Runnovate today by filling out this form.
