4 Signs That Your Social Media Campaign is Desperately Failing

Social media is the place to be if you want to be a smash hit with your customers. Businesses can use social media to interact and engage with their customers, convert prospects into loyal buyers, and boost conversions and sales.

However, there can be problems. The first one is a social media campaign that doesn’t even work. All that money, all that time, and all that effort could be for nothing.

The second problem is that it isn’t always easy to know if a campaign is failing or not. Traffic isn’t really an indicator: sometimes, your traffic is down, but you’re building solid relationships. People following your page is a hit-and-miss variable, too – what if these are the wrong people?

When your social media flatlines, you need to be able to spot it so that you can fix things right away. In this article, I’m going to take a look at the four signs that your social media campaign is desperately failing – and how to fix things.

 

1. You’re spending way too much time on there.

It’s an interesting question: How much time should a small business dedicate to their social media efforts?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here, but if we were to take a look at what other marketers are doing, 64% of them say they dedicate 6 hours per week to their social media campaigns. Some will devote more time, others will devote a bit less, but the consensus is that you should be aiming for this ballpark. If you’re into double figures and getting a bit stressed about things, something isn’t quite right.

It’s the same if you’ve got a huge team (or even your whole business) working on your campaigns. This is a sign that something (or everything) isn’t working.

Some small businesses hire a freelancer to take care of their campaigns. Others might decide to hire a small marketing company to take care of things for them. Either way, if who you hire is spending a disproportionate amount of time on your social media campaigns, take it as a massive red flag that it’s failing.

A good strategy will help you reduce the amount of time you spend on your campaigns. For one thing, an effective strategy will help you to work out how much time you need to spend on your campaign each week. Here is a checklist to start:

  • Content calendar
  • Business goals
  • Marketing objectives
  • Channels and tactics
  • Content strategy
  • Budget
  • Roles (who will do what)

 

2. There is no engagement.

When it comes to social media, it’s not the number of people who like your page that matters – it’s the number of people who engage with your page.

If very few people like individual posts, and if even fewer people are commenting and sharing, your social media campaign is in a bad place. You could have 100,000 page likes, but if only 0.5% of them are engaging, it means nothing.

And it means nothing for two reasons:

  1. If your engagement is going down, so will your conversions.
  2. If your engagement is down, Facebook and Instagram will bury your posts so that no one will see them. Not cool.

Engagement is the first variable you should be looking for. If it’s way below your expectations – or if it’s gone down lately – something needs to change.

There are now almost 2 billion Facebook users, and although creating top-notch content is one thing, what’s more important is that you engage your customers. Here are some tips:

  • Make use of images

According to stats, images get almost 40% more interaction than text and account for over 90% of the most engaging posts on Facebook.

  • Hold contests

People like free stuff. They like to win things. Invite people to interact and engage with your social media accounts by holding awesome contests (as opposed to just promoting yourself all the time).

  • Ask questions

The easiest way to find out more about your audience? Ask questions. It’s also a great way to engage them, and it ensures that you give them more of what they actually want content-wise.

  • Comment

As well as asking questions, you or a member of your team should actively reply to people’s comments on your social media posts.

Of course, no one has the time to reply to comments all the time, but taking the time out now and then to comment and engage with people shows that you care and that you actually notice what people are saying. And people love this kind of thing from their favorite brands.

The more you comment, the more others will comment, and the more your engagement will improve.

 

3. No one is taking action.

Okay, engagement is good. But what if no one is taking action?

If no one is taking action, it means that you’re not doing a very good job of warming up your customers. You’re not making your offer tempting enough. And this means that your social media campaign is ultimately failing.

The ultimate aim of a social media campaign is to get our prospects to follow us from there to our landing page, where they buy our products.

That’s the ideal. Of course, this isn’t going to happen all the time, but if your conversions are way down on your objectives, you need to make changes.

 

First, take a look at your analytics. If your click-through rate is good, but your conversion rate is down, your landing page could be the issue. On the other hand, if even your click-through rate is poor, something isn’t working on your social media channels – and it could be your CTA.

All small businesses should be aiming to put together a social media funnel that generates leads, builds their brand, makes a connection with people – and gets them to buy from us. A CTA is a final push. It’s the part where a user will either commit to taking action or decide that this isn’t for them.

Not using CTAs? Now is the time to include CTAs in your posts. Some marketers include a CTA in the first 2-3 lines of their Facebook post, and again at the end.

A good CTA on social media should explicitly tell the user what it is you want them to do. Don’t give them two or three options. Instead, tell them the one thing you want them to do next. It has to be simple, compelling, and powerful.

 

On the other hand, it might not be your CTA that’s the problem because people might not even be making it that far!

What does this mean?

If the information you’re providing in a post on social media just isn’t interesting enough, people won’t read as far as your CTA.

Take a look at your posts. Are they compelling, informative, entertaining, and engaging?

Or are they bland and otherwise too salesy?

 

Remember, people don’t use social media to be sold to. But, they don’t mind being marketed to (as long as it’s fun, right!?). An overly salesy attitude is overbearing and won’t succeed on social media.

If you want people to take action, you need to show them via content that you’re the expert they can trust. How do you do this? Via valuable content that informs, educates, and – in the right amounts – entertains.

The aim is to provide people with the right amount of information that they need to take action. Don’t provide them with too much – otherwise they’ll have all that they need and won’t need to click. Show them you’re the expert, give them a good piece of info, and make them want to click for the rest.

 

Remember, people don’t use social media to be sold to. But, they don’t mind being marketed to (as long as it’s fun, right?). @aljazfajmut

 

4. Your campaign is the same as your competitors’.

What makes your social media campaign different from your competitors’? How do you stand out?

If you can’t answer these basic questions, you’ve got a problem. Your social media campaign doesn’t stand out from your rivals, and that’s the problem here.

 

If your campaign is the same as your rivals, your customers won’t be able to tell you apart. This might mean that you lose out on them.

Think of all the brands and personalities you’ve ever looked up to in life. They stood out to you because of just that – they were different.

 

As Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion puts it:

 

“The fact is, if a company tries to be a jack of all social media trades, they’ll very likely become a master of none. This is why you’re much better off being a “master of one” – dominating a single social media platform and putting all your effort into that instead of spreading yourself too thin.”

 

Think carefully about what your specific target audience wants to see, and then find ways to distinguish yourself from the crowds.

 

Stay winning!

These are four signs that your social media campaign is failing. To give your campaign a boost, put in place a strategy that will reduce the amount of time you spend on social media, find ways to boost engagement, and write powerful CTAs that nudge your customers in the right direction.

Share the article with your fellow marketers and let us know if you have any tips of your own!

 

4 Signs That Your Social Media Campaign is Desperately Failing

The post 4 Signs That Your Social Media Campaign is Desperately Failing appeared first on GetResponse Blog – Online Marketing Tips.

Source: getresponse

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