5 Common Social Media Mistakes You Could Be Making

Capture, post, and get likes. Easy enough right? You would think so, but there is a lot more than people realize that goes into crafting the perfect social media post and gaining a loyal following. It can be frustrating at times when you think you’re doing everything right, but you’re not seeing the results you want. You may in fact be making one of these 5 classic social media mistakes! We’ll tell you what they are, and how to fix them.

1. Posting Quantity over Quality

Blurry photos? Bad grammar? Off topic content? Yikes. A lot of brands will think that having something low quality on their social media timeline is better than nothing at all, but that’s not really true. 

How to fix it:  Tracking back to our article on Author’s Purpose, there needs to be a good reason for your post to exist. Remember the main 3 categories, or “buckets” of Author’s Purpose: to inform, to entertain, and to persuade. If your post does none of these or doesn’t do them well, then it may be doing you more harm than good and you should skip posting that day. 

2. Not Knowing Your Audience

Understanding who you are trying to target is key in gaining likes, followers, and business! Knowing your audience allows you to fine-tune your post to better reach the people who are more likely to enjoy your product. This is going to be different for every brand and is based on the goods and services you offer. Very few brands have a target audience of “everyone”. 

How to fix it: Do some research! Figure out who the people are that are interacting with your posts and what they all have in common. Are they all ages 20-35? Are they mostly stay at home moms? Do they live within a 15 mile radius? Once you’ve figured it out you can enter your audience metrics into your preferred social platform, and the algorithm should target them for you. 

3. You’re Using Your #Hashtags Wrong

Hashtags are important. On platforms like Instagram and TikTok, this is one of the primary organic ways your content can be discovered on people’s explore feeds. If you don’t use hashtags it’s most likely that your content will only reach your current followers, and no one new. If you’re using the wrong hashtags, you’ll possibly reach new people, but likely not the ones you need. 

How to fix it: Figure out which hashtags are trending, and utilize the ones that are relevant to your brand. As a marketing and content creation agency, we often use the #photography hashtag to reach people who may be interested in what we do. It’s recommended to use somewhere between 3 and 5 hashtags per post, but you can always do more! 

4. You’re Using Only Landscape Photos

This is a bit of a newer one! Way back in the days of Myspace and when Facebook first came around, all social media was computer-based, and landscape pictures were the only ones allowed. When people switched to their phones for scrolling, most social media platforms still had square or landscape restrictions for images. Today, vertical images and video have quickly taken over– for good reason too, they fit on the phone screen so much better!  

How to fix it:  A good 4:5 crop can go a long way to make your image more appealing on a phone screen. You don’t have to ditch your landscape images entirely, but about 50% or more of your images should be vertical. It’s easier to plan ahead for this by shooting a good combination of vertical and horizontal images when capturing content! 

5. Losing Your Humanity

Sometimes we get so concerned with how others will react to our true selves online that we put on this facade of a robotic, corporate, over-friendly weirdo. We’ll be blunt: no one likes that shit. You’re more likely to get positive interactions from social media if you remind people that there’s a person behind those posts. 

How to fix it: Don’t be afraid to use casual language, personal anecdotes, or behind the scenes unaltered footage. People want to see who you really are, so maybe introduce your team members! A little humor goes a long way. If you can show people the fun side of your business, you’re far more likely to gain them as followers!