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Many people create social media profiles, and then simply leave them online, not particularly performing or contributing to business at all. Social media can be considered a necessary, if not a little meaningless, use of time and resources, but the people who think this way are often missing out on the amazing conversion rates that social media can offer when used properly.

While creating a social media conversion system is often a goal for digital marketers, there are several common mistakes that hamper success, however these mistakes are easy to avoid, and the benefits of using social media properly are almost endless. As social media is now the number one driver of referral traffic, if you aren’t seeing conversion rates, then you’re doing something wrong, and it’s probably one of the following six mistakes that can be easily rectified.

Not Having a Strategy

If you post at random times, irregularly, infrequently, then your audience may miss the information you’re offering. This is easily avoided by gaining a preliminary understanding of analytics, and making sure you optimize your time properly. Plus, not having a strategy can also lead to posts that are generic, and not tailored to each social media platform. Nimble is a great way to get insight in how and when you should be posting to your pages for the best results. For example, you should always use hashtags for twitter, and share images, gifs, or videos where possible on Facebook – posting the exact same thing is entirely ineffective.

Not Repeating Yourself

There is a whole phenomenon now recognised by marketers internationally known as the ‘mere-exposure’ effect. This means that by merely exposing your audience to the same information over and over again, you can gain their confidence and become appealing. For digital marketers, this means you need to be confident enough to repeat posts. While you may not want to post the exact same phrase over and over, sharing the same information regularly, phrased in a different way, can be a huge help in driving traffic towards your site. You can use Audience to make sure that this method is working for you.

Using the Same Landing Page for Every Platform

You should have a separate landing page set up for each platform – this means that people who connect via Twitter go to one platform, Facebook another, and LinkedIn another entirely. While these may be largely similar, the slight differences mean you are able to provide your readers with a really personal experience. While creating separate landing pages may be a lot of work, it is simple and convenient to hire experts to produce the content for the pages on 1Day2write.

Not Monitoring Your Results

Once you have built separate landing pages for each platform, you need to monitor how much traffic is coming from each source. This way, you can check what is and isn’t effective or successful, and make sure you avoid content that isn’t working, and use more content that proves to be successful. Having separate landing pages makes the sources of your traffic really easy to review, however tools like Engagio can make it even easier, and a lot more illuminating. This is a simple way of seeing what kind of content leads to more conversions, and also gives you the chance to alter and remedy content that is less successful, so eventually every single post enhances your business.

Forgetting Calls to Action

A call to action is normally present on the website of a business, as well as on blog posts, but they can be overlooked on social media profiles. This can be a costly mistake. While phrasing calls to action on these platforms is tricky, there are professionals at Writemyx who can create awesome calls to action and social media updates. You can make sure they will fit into the limited work count of social media with OriginWritings, and from then you can try to build up followers, email lists, or even direct sales.

Not Targeting Your Posts

Social media is awesome in the sense that you can really describe your target audience. While older systems were limited to demographics like age, you can really pin down the interests and hobbies of someone who is likely to buy your products, and make sure your message is finding relevant people. As images are vital for engagement, you can make sure that the photos and images you share, which are easy to make via Viral Tag, are reaching the right people, who will not only connect with your post, but also share it and visit your site.

Social media is one of the most valuable tools for businesses today, however it must be properly utilized, and the mistakes above should be avoided at all costs.

By Tim Colley

About the author

Tim Colley works as a marketing and business writer for Academic Brits. He often helps companies create viable marketing strategies. Tim likes meeting new people, learning and writing for online magazines and blogs.

Featured image via Unsplash.