Six Mistakes That Could Be Hurting Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

SOURCE: TRAVEL MARKET REPORT

Social media mar­ket­ing allows you to cre­ate and curate online con­tent in order to engage a tar­get­ed audi­ence and devel­op busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. As you build a social media fol­low­ing, avoid mak­ing these mis­takes and jeop­ar­diz­ing your success.

Don’t neglect it.

If you’re in, you have to be all the way in. It can require a lot of work, from post­ing to inter­act­ing with fol­low­ers, but it has the poten­tial to gen­er­ate con­ver­sions for your busi­ness – so make sure you give your social media pages the prop­er amount of time and atten­tion. If that seems like too much, con­sid­er outsourcing.

Don’t always go for the hard sell. 

Fol­low­ers can be turned off by a con­stant inun­da­tion of pro­mo­tion­al posts. Instead, opt for infor­ma­tive posts or curate pic­tures of buck­et-list des­ti­na­tions and inspi­ra­tional memes. To build long-term, mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with your audi­ence, con­nect on a per­son­al lev­el by shar­ing some of your own sto­ry or updates of your trav­els. By gen­uine­ly engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tions, you put a human face to a busi­ness and dri­ve brand loyalty.

Don’t always rely on automation.

Sched­ul­ing posts can be incred­i­bly help­ful when you have a busy sched­ule, but remem­ber to keep an eye on your social media chan­nels in case of break­ing news to avoid post­ing any­thing unin­ten­tion­al­ly insensitive.

Don’t forget about metrics. 

Ana­lyz­ing social media-relat­ed met­rics is an essen­tial tool to help you max­i­mize suc­cess. Define what goals you are try­ing to accom­plish, whether it’s increas­ing engage­ment or dri­ving click-throughs to your web­site. Met­rics give you bet­ter insight into your audi­ence and what they want, help­ing you to main­tain rel­e­vant con­tent and devel­op­ing a long-term rela­tion­ship with them. To mea­sure met­rics, there are a few dif­fer­ent options. Face­book, Twit­ter, and Insta­gram all have native ana­lyt­ics on their apps that allow you to get data. For more in-depth analy­sis, there is also a range of third-par­ty tools.

Don’t be inconsistent.

Look at social media plat­forms as a sup­ple­ment to a blog or a web­site. They should all com­ple­ment one anoth­er, and con­tent should be tai­lored towards each spe­cif­ic plat­form. Twit­ter is good for short updates, where­as Insta­gram is all about easy-to-see-at-a-glance videos and clips con­tent. Face­book is fre­quent­ed by a more mature trav­el­er; LinkedIn can grow your busi­ness pro­file. Plan­ning will ensure a seam­less inte­gra­tion across all platforms.

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Social media evolves at an exhaust­ing clip. Con­sumer trends not only change, but Face­book and Google change poli­cies and algo­rithms, too, which dras­ti­cal­ly affects the land­scape. For instance, unpaid busi­ness page posts on Face­book are being seen by few­er peo­ple these days, so try cre­at­ing a closed group to devel­op a close-knit bond with mem­bers. With over 500 mil­lion dai­ly active users, Insta­gram Sto­ries is anoth­er method to con­nect with your audi­ence; it can lead to pro­file dis­cov­ery, swipe up clicks, and inter­ac­tions with­in your Stories.