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6 Social Media Mistakes You Might be Making

Social media is an alluring way for businesses to advertise, but it also comes with many pitfalls that you may not expect to encounter. Each platform has its own preferences for post types, image sizes and even search optimization. Without a pretty good grasp on the intricacies of each platform, you may be making these mistakes and making your brand look less professional and even a bit silly.

An embarrassing (and easily avoidable) mistake made by a big brand on social media.

Rushed posting. One of our cringiest pet peeves is when it’s obvious that a page has posted something that was not looked over or thought out. You can end up with typos, inappropriate hashtag use or just messy-looking posts. Make it a rule that at least one other person looks over a post before it goes live, you can save yourself a lot of grief over little mistakes. Similarly, you also always want to check what trending hashtags relate to before using them in your own messaging. You don’t want to wind up with a debacle like DiGiorno’s mistake in 2014 where they used a trending hashtag relating to domestic violence to advertise their pizza. One tweet may not seem like a big deal, but if you make a mistake it can turn into bad news for your brand.
Please refer to this when you are sizing images for social media!
Incorrect formatting. Take advantage of the plethora of social media cheat sheets for image sizing. If you’ve sized a cover photo for Pinterest you’ll have to change it around for Facebook so it fits. Similarly, a long vertical picture will work great on Pinterest but looks bad on Twitter. Just keep in mind what works best for the different platforms so that your posts are as visually appealing as possible.
Inconsistent voice. We frequently see pages that just allow all their employees to have access to their social media accounts and post whenever and whatever they like. While this is a nice thought, it leads to a distractingly inconsistent voice and tone across your posts and makes you look pretty unprofessional. You don’t want to give your followers whiplash from all the different types of posts going up on your pages. Try to stick to one voice, one tone and one theme across posts. This can be achieved by having only one person in charge of the account or by hiring professionals like us to manage it for you!

Everything you post on social media should include a visual.
No visuals. If there’s anything worse than formatting images incorrectly, it’s not even having visuals in the first place. Text-only posts are boring. Facebook has tried to spice them up a bit by making short text posts bigger but the 35 character limit is usually just too short for you to get much across. If you must make a text-only post, consider adding a background to make it stand out. The only weapons left to get people’s attention are visuals. Video is taking over and posting relevant video content will always perform better. But if you don’t have a video to go with your post then at least find a license-free picture somewhere to make your post pretty! 51% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI. Get ahead of the curve!
Platform misuse. Pinning 50 different things to a Pinterest board every day is totally acceptable. But sharing 50 different things to your Facebook page is going to make you (and your brand!) look a little crazy. Similarly, you should absolutely be hashtagging your posts on Twitter and Instagram. But for Facebook and LinkedIn this practice is pretty much useless and it makes you look like a novice if you’re using them. LinkedIn won’t even acknowledge your hashtags and Facebook will make it look like it’s using them (they turn blue) but Facebook posts without a hashtag fare better than those with a hashtag. It’s true. Learn about your platforms before posting anything.
Some quick investigation into relevant hashtags can make it much easier for a search engine to find your content!
Disregard of search engine optimization (SEO). To piggyback off of platform misuse, we have to talk about disregarding SEO. Social media is a treasure trove of SEO. You should be researching what keywords and phrases people are using for your brand and paying attention to high-performing hashtags you can use. There are great tools for doing this, Keyhole can give you a good idea of good hashtags to use and even Hashtagify. You should save room in your tweets for at least two to three hashtags and put up to 30 hashtags at the end of your Instagram posts. Even Pinterest is hashtag-friendly! If you’re trying to reach the biggest audience possible you need to take the steps to help search engines find your content.

So there you have it. A basic overview of six mistakes you might be making on social media along with some ideas on how to fix them. If you’re still struggling with getting a handle on the intricacies of social media marketing, we offer training and comprehensive social media packages. Send us an email at info@buzzlymedia.com if you’re ready to hand over the responsibility to the experts.

June 29, 2019/by Emma

What Can Social Media Do for my B2B Company?

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Leaving a comprehensive social media strategy out of your marketing efforts is a big mistake for B2B businesses. In today’s digital world, the sales process is shifting online for the majority of industries, with one study finding that “most customers are 57 percent through the buying process before the first meeting with a company representative.” The same study found also found that “61 percent of all B2B transactions now start online. And 58 percent use social media as a research channel.”

Consumers across all industries are becoming less responsive to cold-outreach and more independent in their research on companies they might do business with, and products they might purchase. Social media channels like LinkedIn and Facebook, and social media service providers like Buzzly Media offer B2B companies many valuable ways to reach customers online. salesperson shaking hand

Social media virtually eliminates the learning curve and gives your customers an almost immediate idea about your brand and your brand’s values before they even make contact with a sales person. This is valuable in the sales cycle because customers who have some interest in your brand (but not enough to convert) may be searching for your company online to learn more before they commit. Social media will offer them softer, more relatable content to ease them into your company culture and let know what to expect when they do decide to reach out.

Social media is one of the best tools available to strengthen your brand’s status as a thought leader in your industry. By connecting with influencers, posting timely industry news updates and weighing in on relevant issues, your brand’s credibility will rise dramatically over time. Brand-building, however, is just one element of a social media campaign and should reflect that customers like to see educational content that is more informational than it is brand / sales-centric.This builds trust and will help them remember your company when they are ready to make a purchase.

You would also be strongly advised to consider social media marketing if you are trying to drive valuable traffic to your website and landing pages. Buzzly Media clients have had great success in generating leads through the careful development of laser-focused landing pages. It’s a great way for someone to engage with your brand without committing much time. The easier you make it for people to hop in your sales funnel, the more leads you’ll have overall.

customer doing online search Social media will also help your website’s ranking by increasing the number of sites linking in, otherwise known as “backlinks.” These tell search engines that your website must have valuable information on it if others are spending time putting your links in their content, and it’s great for boosting search engine optimization. Remember, “94 percent of business buyers do some form of online research” when looking over their options.

And finally, the best part of social media is that it’s social! Having digital presences for your brand and its executives will allow you to connect with valuable industry contacts and start building relationships online. We know that “more than 90 percent of decision makers never respond to cold outreach.” A great way to move right past the cold outreach part of the sales cycle is to network online and give your potential customers a face to your brand. This will make you and your company seem more familiar when the time comes to sell.

The most important thing about establishing a digital presence for your brand is having the right information available to people at the right time. You never know how or when customers are searching. If it’s on Google (which is quite likely), then you want to make sure you are ranking high for generic industry keywords and have the social media profiles to back it up. If it’s late at night (or in a different timezone) when a potential customer can’t make contact with a human salesperson, you want them to get that same personalized experience through your social media.

A comprehensive social media strategy is the way to take your B2B business to the next level in today’s digital world. When you decide it’s time for a thoughtful and effective dive into social media marketing, let the fabulous people at Buzzly Media know! We’re always ready to help and will respond to your request with surprising speed.

Already have a social media presence and want help to improve it? Sign up for a free audit with Buzzly Media on our site and our experts will deliver their recommendations.

June 13, 2018/by Emma

6 Essential Marketing Channels for Nonprofits

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Marketing in the digital age gets more and more complex every day. There are new platforms to consider, old platforms to throw out, and overall way too many things for one person to think about. If you’re wondering what marketing channels you shouldn’t be ignoring, you’re in the right place! We’ve elaborated on “The Big Six Channels” put forth in the 2016 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.

Websites. Please please please have a search engine optimized, easy to navigate and mobile-friendly website. If search engines cannot find your website, users may not be able to get to it in the first place! If your website is hard to look through, users will get frustrated and leave. And if your site is not mobile-friendly, you could be losing more than half your traffic. (Yes, according to SimilarWeb’s State of Mobile Web US 2015 report, an average of 55.67% of site traffic now comes from mobile devices.)
Email. If you think email sounds old school and have shifted your focus away from it you are doing your organization a huge disservice. A recent survey by Adobe showed that even millennials are addicted to email, checking it more frequently than any other age group and even checking it while using the bathroom! (Gross, but true!) Email is a great way to directly reach your followers, but beware of fatiguing them with too much of it.
Traditional social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram… They’re all still extremely valuable to an organization looking to increase brand awareness. These channels will help make your organization become an authority in its industry and keep up engagement with followers. A Blackbaud study on the next generation of American giving recently found that “Nearly 60 percent of Gen Y identified the ability to directly see the impact of their donation as a critical part of the decision process – this tails off with the older generations.” More and more, people want to really see where their money is going. Social media is a great way to show people that. (And be sure to start focusing on visual social media, Instagram and videos are the ways of the future!)
In-person events. There’s nothing like humans telling other humans about causes they care about. Nonprofits cannot afford to eliminate events from their marketing strategy. Get on the mailing lists of local convention centers and check events on sites like EventBrite to stay up to date on relevant happenings your organization can attend!
Print marketing. That’s right, it’s still worth your time to print things onto pieces of paper. From printing beautifully designed event tickets to putting together newsletters, don’t write off print marketing just yet. Though many will claim that things like direct mailers are dying off, we know that mailings have grown modestly year over year and that people are indicating they do still read their physical mail. While your response from these efforts may skew towards an older demographic (55+) you certainly don’t want to ignore it as a channel.
Media Relations and Public Relations. According to Everything-PR, “Media relations can be described as a company’s interactions with editors, reporters and journalists.” You need someone in your organization to be connected to the news world and constantly be looking for opportunities to get your organization out there. Similarly, you’ll need some public relations people to effectively handle that communication and choose the message you want to send to the public. Without these two things no one will ever know what a great job your nonprofit is doing in the community!

If this seems like a daunting list then think about what is most important to your organization’s goals and try to prioritize from there. Also remember that you can outsource a lot of this to professionals–we’ve previously talked about some reasons to outsource social media! You don’t have to go it alone. Happy marketing!

June 29, 2016/by emma totten