Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Do you ever feel like you are just spinning your wheels using social media for your wedding business?

It can be frustrating to post, tweet and pin with little or no engagement, leads or return on your time.  You may be making some common social media mistakes – but don’t worry, they are easily fixed!

Here are 4 social media mistakes and how to fix them:

1) Not having a clear strategy

What are your goals for social media? Is it to create buzz? Drive sales by promoting deals? Network with other vendors?  Or are you just posting because you think you need to in order to stay relevant? Prospective clients see social media as a way to interact with you and your business so it is important to know your goals and have a strategy in place.

When it comes to social media sites, remember that you are not in control of the platform. Your ability to reach your fans can change at any time (as we’re finding with Facebook). So be sure to direct prospects to your website to sign up for your email list so you can follow up with them directly in their inbox as well.

2) Choosing the wrong platform

It is easy to be overwhelmed by all the social media choices out there. Should you use Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or Instagram? Instead of spreading yourself thin by trying to be everywhere, choose 1-2 platforms where you can provide the most value and focus on those.

So which one should you choose? Think about your ideal wedding client. Which platforms are they using the most? Even if they have multiple social media accounts, they probably only engage with 1-2 of them regularly.  Find out which ones they are using and make sure you are posting there consistently.

3) Posting the wrong content

Instead of auto-posting the same thing across all channels, you should try to create content specifically for each platform.  Infographics work well on Pinterest but your Facebook fans might want wedding planning tips.

A tip from this article on Social Media Examiner is to find your loudest fans, the ones who are most active and pay attention to the content that gets them most engaged. Is it photo posts, planning tips, real weddings? Use this to dictate what you should be posting to get more engagement. You will also want to make sure you are posting when your fans are online, and consistently enough to be meaningful.

4) Not measuring and tracking

You can’t know if something is working if you aren’t tracking and measuring it.  It’s easy to get caught up in the number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ your content gets instead of how social media can affect your leads and sales.

So how do you measure if it is working? Use Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from and what percentage is from social media accounts. Instead of linking to your homepage in your social media profiles, set up a custom web page for each social media platform (ex: yoursite.com/facebook). When you promote a special offer, use these unique sales pages to help track which social media platform is working best to generate leads.

Action Steps:

• Determine your social media strategy. What is your ideal goal?
• Choose 1-2 platforms to focus on first and build a strong following there before expanding to others.
• Evaluate what type of content works best for engagement and post more of it.
• Set up a system to track how social media is performing for your business.

 
How do you use social media in your wedding business?

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