Busting Social Media Marketing Myths #2
Welcome to part two of Busting Social Media Marketing Myths. Although social media marketing has been an essential tool for marketers for years, some businesses still believe in the misconceptions surrounding it. Thus, they miss out on having a presence on social media or go about it the wrong way. We feel it’s our responsibility to dispel some of these common myths and help steer your business down the right path.
Make sure to read Busting Social Media Marketing Myths #1 for more busts on social media marketing myths.
Myth: Influencers will help boost sales
Team Vision Marketing recognizes the power behind social media influencers and their benefit as a spokesperson or promotion vehicle. But, you’ll be wasting your money if you use influencers solely to increase your sales. It’s tricky for brands to track how influencers are making them money. Also, influencer marketing can be expensive, so it’s hard to tell if your money is being well spent. According to Market Week, 38% of marketers are not sure if influencer activity actually drives sales and 86% are unsure how influencers calculate their fees, according to a survey of 200 marketers conducted by Rakuten Marketing.
Instead, we want our clients to view these unique partnerships as brand promotions. Partnering with an influencer can help your brand gain credibility, reach, and awareness. According to ShaneBarker.com, 77% of marketers use influencers to drive up engagement, 89% use influencers to create more authentic content for their brand. Influencers can also help drive traffic to your website and introduce your brand to new markets. 56% of marketers use influencers to drive traffic to their website and 43% use influencers to reach younger markets.
However, influencer marketing isn’t for every brand. Collaborations with influencers need to make sense and businesses need to be selective about who they hire. Do they reach your target market? Are they reliable? What other brands do they do collaborations with? What type of content do they post? Brands also need to realize that no matter how popular an influencer is, not all of their followers are going to fully trust their sponsored content.
Myth: It’s all about likes and followers
Many people mistake follower growth and likes as metrics for success. Don’t get us wrong, being popular on social media is great, but the metric a brand should be paying attention to is engagement. Engagement measures all the likes, comments, and retweets/shares of a post and this metric tells you how engaged your followers are. The key point to take away from this myth busting is quality over quantity. A lot of likes are still good, but the quality of the comments and the number of retweets/shares determine the quality of the post. We recommend analyzing the insights of your posts and asking your audience to weigh in on what type of content they want to see more of.
Myth: I can be my own social media manager! It’s easy!
Managing business social media accounts is not as easy as some might think. It’s not like managing your personal account. As we said in our Busting Social Media Marketing Myths – #1 blog post, it takes a lot of time and money to maintain and upkeep your brand’s social media presence, which means that you are spending less time on your primary business responsibilities. Among other things, these are some of the requirements of maintaining your brand’s social media presence:
- Create a social media marketing plan
- Create a content calendar
- Create social media campaigns
- Develop and design content
- Copy writing
- Schedule posts
- Continuously engage in posting, liking and commenting on all social media networks
- Review and respond to customer questions/comments
- Analyze and evaluate report data, make appropriate adjustments to your campaign and content strategies
This is why successful companies on social media either have an in-house social media manager or hire a social media marketing agency to handle their accounts.
Myth: I can just post one kind of content every time.
If you scroll through other successful social media profiles, you will see how wrong this myth is. The diversity of content is key to keeping your feed feeling fresh to your followers and for attracting new leads. Your content needs to add value and connect to your followers’ lives. Plus, your brand’s posts are competing with posts from thousands of other brands, so you need to stand out.
To get some ideas on what types of content to post, read our “Social Media Marketing – Tips” blog post
See screenshots of Team Vision Marketing’s and Castle & Cooke Homes Hawaii’s Instagram feeds as an example of providing a diverse array of posts. Both have a strong mixture of stories, videos, graphics, and photos.
