Leading a startup to success is anything but easy, and it’s hard to stay measured and strategic when your service or product is so great that you want to shout it from the rooftops. However, rushing into your social media strategy can be deadly for startups. What are the most common mistakes that startups make on social media?
Missing a Target
Failing to define a target for your social media efforts will prevent you from experiencing success. After all, if you try to please everyone, you will end up pleasing no one. For example, if you want to target single affluent women between 25-35, Instagram might be a better platform for your startup than Twitter.
Ignoring Metrics
Metrics and data are critical to making sure that the messages you are sending to your audience are being received well. Thankfully, there are many free analytic platforms where you can learn more about post performance, like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics.
Using Every Platform
All of the biggest brands are on every platform, so that means your startup should be too, right? Wrong! Trying to balance the needs of audiences on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram when you are also struggling to get your business off the ground is a bad idea. Instead, focus on posting consistently on a few platforms and growing things from there.
Missing High Traffic Times
You could be posting the best content in the world at 2:00 AM and you would experience almost no engagement. Make sure that your social media posts go live when your target customers are online. Experiment with different posting times on different platforms to see when engagement is highest and tailor your posts accordingly.
#Hashtags
Hashtags are wonderful tools on Twitter and Instagram, but too many hashtags can lower engagement. Instagram can accommodate up to 30 hashtags, and you can place as many as you want on any post. However, Twitter posts with 1-2 hashtags get better results than those with 3 or more. Captions with hashtags are also less likely to be read.
Ignoring Images
Visual marketing is key to finding social media success for any brand. Tweets containing images are retweeted 150% more often, and Facebook posts with photos get almost 250% more engagement. If you aren’t using images on every social platform, now is the time to start snapping pictures!
Social Media Help for Your Startup from My Content Co
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