8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes New Bloggers Need to Avoid (Infographic)

Having a social media marketing strategy is crucial for the success of your blog.

Especially when you’re starting out and haven’t grown your blog’s traffic to the point where you can make enough money to live comfortably.

Once you learn how to start a blog, it’s imperative that you promote it in order to grow your following, and with over 2.5billion active social media users around the world, there’s no better place to promote your blog than on social media.

That being said, you must avoid making the 8 following mistakes in order for your social media marketing strategy to succeed:

What are the social media marketing mistakes you must avoid?

Mistake #1: Having No Social Media Marketing Strategy

Most bloggers start their blog and right away want to jump to creating their social media profiles.

This is a huge mistake you want to avoid. First, you need to come up with a viable social media marketing strategy.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• • What will I be blogging about?
  • Which social media platform performs best in my niche?
  • Which social media platforms are my competitors using?

The answer to those three questions will help you figure out which social media platform is best to get started on. It will also lead you to some of the people you should follow and learn from to get a better understanding of what works on that particular platform.

Once you have that down, you can decide if you need further education on how to properly use your chosen social media platform.

You must also build a posting schedule as part of your social media marketing strategy based on your findings as you’ll notice that some social media platforms require more activity than others in order to succeed.

Lastly, you should set up a list of goals you want to achieve. These can be anywhere from the number of followers you want to gain, to the amount of new traffic you wish to send to your blog.

The key here is to have a social media marketing strategy in place before trying to build your presence.

Mistake #2: Creating Accounts on Too Many Platforms

I’m a big proponent of focusing on one social media platform instead of trying to build a presence on all of them.

The reason is that you’ll spread yourself too thin if you try to master multiple social media platforms at the same time.

“Jack of all trades, master of none”

You don’t want to be that guy. Building a social media presence on any platform takes lots of time and dedication. Trying to do so on too many of them will ruin your chances of success on all of them.

The best thing to do is to decide which is the best social media platform for your blog based on the niche you’re in and going all out to build your presence on that one.

Once you’re firmly entrenched in that platform, then and only then, should you even consider moving on to building your presence on other social media platforms.

As you can see in the above graphic. There are plenty of active social media users on every platform. Your job is to focus on one and dominate it.

Mistake #3: Paying for Fake Followers

I made this mistake a few years back. I had a Facebook fan page (now defunct) that I wanted to grow and decided to buy 10,000 followers for $20.

The guy actually over delivered and in a matter of three days, I had over 11 thousand new followers.

Boy was I pumped!

Then I started to post different quotes and articles on the page but none of my followers were interacting with anything I posted.

Come to find out, “fake it till you make it,” did nothing for me. Sure some people might have been impressed by my large following but the moment they looked at the page itself, they would see there was no action.

Not to mention, that about a month later most of those “followers” were gone and not long after that I only had around 400 followers left.

Today, most social media platforms are cracking down on this phenomenon and if you’re caught doing it, they might ban you from their site.

Don’t be like me when I didn’t know any better… build your following the right way and you’ll have nothing to fear. On the contrary, you’ll have a flock of followers hanging on your every word.

Mistake #4: Talking Too Much About Your Brand

Most successful bloggers love what they do. It’s hard to stay motivated if you don’t.

However, no matter how much you love your blog, don’t make the mistake of talking too much about it on social media.

Part of your social media marketing strategy should be to interact with your fans and provide them with useful information that they can use in their daily lives.

Don’t fall into the trap of only discussing your brand/products on social media. This will drive most of your fans away. You’d probably only be left with your friends and family if you do this long enough.

Mix it up… comment on other blogger’s pages, answer your follower’s questions, provide free tips, etc.

Mistake #5: Using Irrelevant and Excessive Hashtags

First, let’s define what a hashtag is:

A hashtag is a type of metadata tag used on social networks such as Twitter and other microblogging services, allowing users to apply dynamic, user-generated tagging which makes it possible for others to easily find messages with a specific theme or content.

In simpler terms… hashtags are keywords used to describe your content so that others can easily find it.

The problem is that many bloggers know this and use as many hashtags as they can trying to make their content more visible — to the point of even using unrelated hashtags.

Let’s say that you wrote an article about bloggers who make a sh*t load of money and travel the world in style. While promoting it on social media you decide to use the following hashtags:

• • #bloggers
  • #money
  • #travel
  • #world
  • #style
  • #rich
  • #excursion
  • #”country name”

Bloggers, money, and travel are hashtags you probably want to use. However, hashtagging a country or excursion is not the way to go.

Why?

Because neither is the focus of your article and believe it or not, the social media platform you listed that on will be confused as to what you’re trying to convey. Sometimes social media search algorithms push uncomprehensible content to the bottom of the list.

Make it a habit of only using hashtags that are relevant to what you’re trying to convey. The more relevant your hashtags are, the happier the people finding your content will be and vice versa… Nobody wants to search for something and find unrelated results.

Mistake #6: Sharing Too Often

Below are some guidelines on how often you should share on some of the most popular social media platforms in the world:

Image source: CoShedule

Did you think you could share however often you wanted on social media? Not so fast my friend.

Actually… you could but that wouldn’t be a sound decision.

Most social media platforms have a sweet spot as to how often one should share. And depending on who you listen to that number can vary greatly.

The guidelines you see above are based on 17 case studies that CoSchedule analyzed, therefore it is a good place to start.

However, don’t only pin 30 times a day because they found pinning more ofter is too much. Do your own testing.

Stick within these guidelines and then go over them. See if your interactions or traffic is affected by your changes and make a decision based on your own findings.

When it comes to how often you should share… there is no magic formula. However, sharing too often can hurt your social media marketing strategies effectiveness so find your sweet spot and go with it.

Note: Stick close to these guidelines when testing your own strategies. Pinning 500 times a day probably isn’t a good thing, but perhaps 50 is your sweet spot.

Mistake #7: Forgetting to Proofread

Sometimes we try to do so many things at once, that we forget to pay attention to any of them.

This is a huge mistake when it comes to executing your social media marketing strategy successfully.

Proofread every message you send on social media. You don’t want to be thought of as a joke and having a bunch of misspelled words throughout your profile page can cause that.

Mistake #8: Neglecting the “Social” Aspect of Social Media

I would describe social media as a web-based site that allows people to interact with each other.

Media = the online platform being used.

Social = interacting with others.

Put bluntly, you cannot succeed on any social media platform without interacting with others.

The way you interact depends on which platform you decide to go after.

Don’t even bother trying to build a social media marketing strategy if you don’t plan on interacting with others. It won’t work so save yourself the trouble.

Conclusion

Executing a well put together social media marketing strategy is crucial to your blog’s success.

Your blog probably won’t survive without it.

That’s why you must avoid making certain mistakes that can doom you from the get-go.

Be smart by putting all your focus on one social media platform and masterfully executing your marketing strategy on that platform.

Are you guilty of making any of these mistakes, if not, are there any mistakes you think should be added to this list?

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