10 Social Media Mistakes Startups Need to Avoid

Starting a new company comes with enough difficulties without having to worry about social media management. In today’s economy launching a great social media presence is definitely a must for any new startup, however, we know it can be overwhelming and difficult for anyone not familiar with it.
Whilst it may be something you are hoping to avoid, with more and more smartphone users it is a huge advantage to you and your startup to have a strong social media presence. With that being said, our London based social media experts find that too many Startups are busy working on other areas of their business and lack effective management of their social media campaigns often making mistakes that can be damaging to their brand forever.
That’s why our social media experts at SocialWarehouse have put together a list of social media mistakes to avoid and ensure you maintain a strong social media campaign that is not only good for you but good for your audience and potential customers.

Not Having a Target Audience

In our experts experience this has to be the number one mistake startups tend to make andf is therefore our number one mistake to avoid for your new company’s social media management.
As with your startup business you started with a plan and your social media strategy should be no different. This is a key determining factor that you should be thinking about before even attempting to manage your social media. Identifying your target demographic should be a well thought out process and should involve a lot of emphasis on exactly who your customer is.
A very common mistake made more times than not is not being specific enough, there is a huge difference between saying your target customer is “male” as opposed to saying your target customer is ‘male between the ages of 18-30 years old who is sporty and athletic, who lives in London and owns a car’.
Drilling down to be as exact as possible will not only save you money in terms of social media demographic targeting, it will also clearly align your product to it’s respective niche.
Not Using Metrics to Measure Success

Too often startup companies will have social media set up, but no one is measuring the effectiveness of it and whether or not it is actually helping or not. If you are not not doing this then how do you know if what you are doing is successful?
In our experience what we find is that most startups didn’t know they could actually measure the success of their social media and how it is affecting their ROI (return on investment). There are various tools available for to you to use to help you track user engagement and ultimately website traffic.
Tools such as Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics are great to track how customers have reacted to the content you have posted, as well as how much your brand is mentioned. Google Analytics is great way to track your website traffic and to see how much traffic you are actually getting through from social media.
Using Every Social Media Platform Available

This is another huge mistake that startups tend to make, and you will find that this mistake is usually made as a result of not identifying their target demographic. As said in point one a target demographic is key, and if not specific enough will lead to you being on every social media platform available.
In hindsight it may seem like the best thing to do – if you are on every social media platform you should reach a wider audience right? Wrong!
The problem you have here is that being on every platform can seriously negate the effects of your brand and what you are trying to achieve. If your target is women in their late 40’s why are you on snapchat? its ineffective, resource consuming and a waste of time. You only want to be using social media platforms that your target demographic is using otherwise their is no point or goal to your efforts.
Missing Out on Target Traffic

As the famous quote goes “There are not enough hours in a day” and this is true to every startup business.
Understandably there are many things to deal with when you have a new startup and before you realise it, it’s 1am and you’ve realised you have forgotten to do your social media. So you make a cuppa and there you go posting and tweeting, it’s now 3am and at last you can go to bed before you have to wake up in 3 hours.
The problem you have now is, is anyone even seeing/reading this content you spent so long on? Is your target demographic even awake? and by the time they do wake up and get onto social media millions of posts have been posted and yours has just become invisible in the forgotten crowd.
So now not only have you lost out on extra hours of sleep, you just wasted your time and maybe some of your best content.
Make sure you know when your customers are online and schedule time in the day to ensure you are posting your valued content at those times. Using a scheduler like Hootsuite can help out massively and save you an immense amount of time.
Misusing Hashtags

Too many people think that you can put a Hashtag in front of every word and expect huge results, this is a common misconception with new inexperience startups in particular.
Hashtags are a great tool that help build exposure to your company and brand but can be highly ineffective if used incorrectly. The key to using hashtags is to identify specific keywords that will engage and attract your audience. It can be difficult to work out what keywords are trending, however our social media experts suggest you use a tool like Hashtagify. This is a great tool that will help identify popular hashtags that are trending and any other hashtags that correlate.
Using appropriate hashtags has an effect on the engagement rate of your content, so make sure you are not using unnecessary or excessive amounts of hashtags.
Not Using Visual Content

Heard the expression ‘A picture speaks a thousands words’? Well it’s not just a saying for no reason, visual content is 10 times more likely to get a higher engagement rate than no visual content.
Just to put it into perspective, every 1 second 721 Instagram photos are uploaded, 28,935 Instagram photos are liked, 69,444 Snapchat Pictures are viewed, 469,455 Facebook photos are liked and the list goes on.
Visual marketing is highly recommended to any business not only startups, and this can be done in various ways such as photos, video content and infographics. The best way is to mix it up and use as many different types of visual content, high quality images will enhance the professionalism of your startup.
Not Having a Bio

It is amazing how many companies in general forget to write a Bio or don’t think it’s important even though it’s the easiest part of your social media management.
People want to know who you are and what you have to offer, you will be amazed at how many people will leave a social media profile due to it not having a Bio written.
This is a loss of a potential customer and not good for any business who wishes to survive.
Your bio does not have to be over-complicated at all, it just needs to be short and brief and highlight who you are and what you have to offer. Try to be creative as this type of information will attract customers and make them want to see what else you have to offer.
Neglecting Customer Complaints

Never be too busy to respond to a customer complaint on social media or think that you can just ignore it. Too many startups think ‘Oh well it’s only 1 complaint’ or think if they delete the comment no one will notice, this is completely the wrong attitude to have.
Having a complaint is not the end of the world, you just need to remember that you are not the only person who can see this complaint, the rest of your customers can see it too and they are sitting patiently waiting to see how you respond to it.
Ensure that you respond to every complaint and deal with it in a professional and effective timely manner, not only will this show your customers that you care but also instils trust in your company with them.
Don’t forget that potential customers judge a company by existing customer complaints on a regular basis.
Over Promoting Your Business

This is something that happens too often and time and time again, some businesses just don’t understand how counteractive it can be.
Of course we all want to promote our business and to get customers through the door, however customers don’t want to see you talking about your business all the time. Doing this will only make your business appear to look like a nuisance spam sales caller.
Instead what you should be aiming for is to share knowledge and advice on what you are selling, show that you are an expert in your field and this will bring customers to you naturally.
No Engagement

The whole point of social media is to socialise with people. A lot of startups think that posting regularly is enough to maintain a social media presence and attract customers, sadly this is very wrong and not socialising is very counteractive and will only push people away from you.
Having a great social media presence means that you need to interact with potential customers and like minded individuals in your business field. Connecting with various different people not only adds value to your business but also adds value to your customers.
Engagement is the be all and end all of social media management. If there is no engagement then you have fundamentally misunderstood what the point of a social media marketing campaign is and you are also missing out on huge rewards that could be achieved.

Having a new company is a lot of hard work and dedication – managing your social media presence on top of it can seem like a real headache.
After reading the social media mistakes to avoid you might be thinking how can I possibly have enough time to manage this, and the answer might well possibly be that you can’t. That is absolutely fine as there is always a solution, hiring a social media manager that has a wealth of experience in marketing and writing skills can help take the burden off you.
Here at SocialWarehouse we have a great deal of social media experts who specialise in various different niches and are happy to help manage your social media load. If you would like to find out more get in contact with one our social media experts today.