10 Reasons Why your Social Media Marketing isn’t Working

What’s your social media marketing strategy? Posting and posting and posting some more? Are you getting the results you want?

Insanity – doing something over and over again expecting the same results.

Is Your Social Media Marketing Yielding…

• increased traffic to the website?
• better search engine results page (SERP) rankings (SEO)?
• increased sales?
• increased following?
• brand awareness?
• whatever your business goal or objective is?
• conversions?

These are the top 10 Reasons why your Social Media isn’t Working:

1. You didn’t set SMART goals. Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. That way, you’ll know when you’ve achieved them.
2. Not having a strategic marketing plan. Or if you did write up a plan, it was written years ago and is probably irrelevant now. A strategic plan is a living, breathing document that changes each month.
3. You didn’t create a tactical plan outlining how you’re going to implement the strategic plan. This is like a to-do list of what you’re going to do when and for how long.
4. You are trying to reach a target market that’s too broad. Defining a target market niche is crucial. You talk to men differently than you talk to women. Same thing applies to baby boomers or millennials.
5. Not doing your research. If your target market is on LinkedIn, why are you spending so much time on Facebook? Maybe it’s the other way around. You have to know your target to know where they’re hanging out online.
6. All you are posting are sales pitches. It’s not all about you! You need to follow the 10-4-1 rule. Out of every 15 posts in any given network, 10 are other peoples’ content of interest to your target, 4 are your original blog posts or tips, and 1, only 1 is a direct sales post. Share don’t sell!
7. You’re not blogging enough. Ideally, you should blog 2-3 times a week. The more often you blog, the more traffic you’ll drive to your site if you’re sharing it on social media properly. Your blog should also be set up correctly as part of your business website.
8. You’re not checking your analytics and insights. These tell you invaluable information about your followers, what types of posts they like and engage with. They will also tell you if you’re reaching the right target. This is especially critical for local businesses. Having 1000 Twitter followers is grand, but useless if only 7% are in your geographic area and you’re a local retailer.
9. Not planning. Each month is different. Besides seasons and holidays, you have observance and awareness days that will be trending on social media. Search for the word “trending” on this site to see what’s going to be trending in the current or coming month. I update the dates toward the end of each month for the next month.
10. You’re not devoting enough time. If you’re starting from scratch with little or no following, it takes 90 minutes a day of work over all the networks besides blogging 3x a week for 30 days to grow a following. Moreover, once a following is built, then you can manage your social media in 30 minutes a day with the free online tools. Yes, it takes some sweat equity, patience, and perseverance, but depending on your business, you should start seeing results in 2-3 months.

Related: Why Your Marketing isn’t Working and How to Fix it

Obviously, most of these items are time-consuming — especially if you’re not sure how to do it. You can learn how to do it yourself — I can teach you — or train a staff member.

If you’re not sure what you need, we can do a free 15-minute phone consultation and analysis of your social media efforts – click here to schedule!

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