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If you’re doing digital marketing for your business and not getting the social media conversions you want, then it may be time to reevaluate your strategies. There are actions that can help you increase engagement, leads, and conversions, and there are also those that can hinder it. Let's talk about eight common mistakes that will slow down your social media conversions.
Social media marketing’s goal is engagement — clicks, likes, comments, and shares. Why? Because it can help convert the general audience into relevant followers, which makes them a step closer to becoming leads.
When done properly, you can eventually turn your leads into paying customers. Thus, your efforts should be directed toward increasing your target audience engagement.
Below are a few things that hinder engagement and, as a result, slow down social media conversions.
You Don't Use a Call-to-Action
A call-to-action or CTA is a line that encourages a person to respond or take action. Does “Visit us!” or “Call us today!” sound familiar? These are examples of CTAs that people use.
Seems simple, right? Adding a CTA can be the nudge your audience needs to engage with your content — and we want audience engagement.
What Makes an Effective Call-to-Action?
An effective CTA can do one or all of these things:
Trigger an Emotional Reaction
Emotion is one of the strongest factors that can push people to do things — urging them to make a purchase or enticing them to engage with your content. An excellent CTA is one that can trigger a person’s emotional strings, like sparking a strong feeling of want or need or inspiring a feeling of wanting to make a loved one happy.
Instruct a Person
Sometimes, your audience only needs instructions to engage with your post or purchase your product. Adding a “Click here to buy” CTA can be a helpful addition to your content.
Create Urgency
Creating urgency, like a promo code with a countdown timer, can urge people to take action ASAP.
Provide Incentives
Another option to make CTAs more effective is by providing incentives. It can be email-gated like a discount coupon or an eBook, or other freebies such as free shipping on their first purchase, that can entice them to participate.
You Don't Provide Value for Your Followers
One reason you might not be getting the social media conversions you want is that you’re not providing value for your followers.
People don’t focus on your brand. They care about the value your content brings to their life. Yet, many businesses still allot a large chunk of their resources for hard sell brand promotions.
People want to see content that matters to them!
For instance, if you were to follow a brand on social media, which one would you go for: a brand selling high-end pens who post photos of their pens in different angles over and over again, or a brand selling average pens who post stories of how their pens helped shape the world, their company’s history, funny videos of the many uses of their pens, calligraphy 101, and how to improve your handwriting?
The latter offers more value, and that’s why followers continue to come back for more. It pays to be creative when making content for social media.
Here are some tips.
Know Who Your Audience Is
Identify who your target audience is. Know what activities they usually like doing, the influencers they follow, the topics they usually engage with, the problems they often encounter, and their other common interests. This can help you determine what type of content to create.
Address Their Problems
Identify what common issues and concerns they face that’s relevant or related to the product that you’re selling. For example, if you’re selling a portable blender that doubles as a tumbler targeted to people who go to the gym, think about what problems you address by offering the product to them.
Does it offer less preparation time? Less waste? Improved freshness?
The more issues you can solve, the better.
Once you’ve listed them down, start developing creative ways to present them.
Use People-Based Marketing
Avoid uploading generic ads or boring brand-related promotions. Think about what your audience likes and let your content revolve around their interests. Keep your materials relevant, informative, and people-oriented.
Promote Your Brand in Moderation
To be clear, we're not telling you never to promote your brand. However, you should do it in moderation.
You don’t have to mention your brand a hundred times in a five-minute video. You don’t have to show your logo in every frame. Your posts don’t have to always be about your product, its specifications, and how exceptional its quality is.
Promote your brand very carefully. Focus on value.
You're Relying Mostly On Text-Based Posts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and it rings true when it comes to social media. Your followers respond better to posts with photos or videos compared to text-based posts. Thus, they get more attention and engagement.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to completely eliminate posts that contain only text from your feed. This type of content can still be effective, especially on Twitter. If you have more to say, just include a link to your website or article.
The best practice, however, is to combine the two. A compelling (and relevant) image along with a short caption can get more engagement compared to a text-only or image-only post.
You Don't Post Enough
How often do you post on your social media accounts? Once a week? Twice a month? A few times a year? If you’re not posting enough, then you can’t expect people to continue to follow you.
The recommended number of posts a day for Instagram and Facebook is two to three, and about three to 15 posts on Twitter, since tweets have a short shelf life.
You Post at the Wrong Times
If you’re already uploading content a few times a day and posting high-quality, high-value material, but your social media conversions are still low, then you might be posting at the wrong times.
Why is this important?
In order to engage with your target audience, you have to release your posts during the time when they’re active online.
The recommended times for scheduling posts may vary depending on the product you’re selling, your industry, and your target audience. You may very likely need to test it out a few times before you can determine the right schedule for your brand.
Your Content Isn't Mobile-Friendly
A large number of social media users use their mobile phones when checking out their feeds, so everything you share online — from website pages to social media posts — should be mobile-friendly.
This is mostly automatic when it comes to social media, since the individual platforms are already responsive to mobile.
However, if you link to your website or blog from your social media posts (which you should be), then you need to make sure those pages look flawless on mobile. Otherwise, when your followers click from your social media post to your web page and don't like what they see, they're going to immediately leave.
This will kill your social media conversions.
Your Images Aren’t Attractive Enough
We’ve already established that images perform better than text-only posts. However, just because you’re posting photos doesn’t mean you’ll immediately get results. The quality of the images you use matter. If you don't play your cards right, then your images might not garner the attention you want and as a result, not get sufficient engagement to contribute to your conversion rate.
Here are some tips you can use when creating images for social media.
Choose Colors Wisely
Don’t let your image blend in with the background of that social media platform. Choose colors that pop — something that can help stop users from scrolling.
Dimensions Matter
Your image should be sized depending on the social media platform where you’ll post them to. For instance, square images work best on Instagram and can be good for Facebook, landscape images are great for Facebook and Twitter, and portrait images are perfect for Pinterest.
Style Appropriately
Having a consistent style that reflects your brand’s image can improve audience recognition. Think of it as your brand’s "voice."
How do you want your audience to see you? This can be accomplished through using the same filter on all of your images and by utilizing a color scheme or a particular design. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Check out what works best for you.
You Don’t Keep Track of Your Metrics
If you’re not keeping track of your metrics, you won't be able to properly determine what works and what doesn't. Actions that aren’t getting responses, when done repeatedly and for a long period, are a waste of time and can hurt your social media conversions in the long run.
Some of the metrics you should be looking at are the following:
Follower Growth
Over time, you should consistently grow your following. Determine what types of contents encourage users to hit follow, and track your follower growth to see if your campaigns are gaining audience attention.
Mentions
See how often people tag or mention your brand on social media platforms.
Hashtags or Keywords
Optimize your posts to improve engagement by determining and including the best keywords and hashtags.
Post Performance
How well are your posts performing? This will let you know how effective your content or material is.
Audience Activity
What days and times are your audience active or online? This will help you determine the right schedule for your posts.
Is your brand guilty of the things we’ve mentioned above? If yes, then it might be time to change your social media approach. Improve your social media presence, increase your follower count, convert your followers to leads, and turn your leads into paying customers by putting a halt to bad practices and making an effort to create better strategies.
