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  • What are common mistakes you see new Social Media Managers make?

    Posted by seohelper on August 12, 2020 at 4:28 pm

    What are common mistakes you see new Social Media Managers make? Either when working with clients or just in general when running their business/freelancing. I’m working on starting my own agency/working for myself. I only have one client right now, but every tree starts a seed.

    What did you wish you knew? What mistakes did you make or do you see others make? What was your journey? I’m hoping a few people would be interested in sharing their honest experiences.

    Plant-B replied 3 years, 6 months ago 1 Member · 15 Replies
  • 15 Replies
  • Broad_Pomelo

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 4:29 pm

    *Side rant about content regarding social media management:* I’ve done a lot of research online about the topic, but the biggest people putting out “Grow your social media management company/how YOU can be a social media manager!!!” content also have a goal with their content. It’s in their best interest to give you some information so you’re engaged and they continue to make money off your viewership, but not enough/complete info that you can be a true competitor or will stop watching. A lot of big “social media manager influencers” also leave out a lot of important parts of their journey from start to finish because they make money off of people who want to hear “This is so easy, you could do it too!” Maybe I’m just a skeptic though.

    I’m hoping to hear some honest experiences here or if you have a resource you learned a lot from, please pass along!

  • Leprochon

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 5:03 pm

    Thinking 11 posts a day is good because some big meme page does the same. Understand your brand, goals and audience.

  • ShamanontheMoon

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 5:31 pm

    Especially for work on Instagram: putting the company logo on posts and designs with too much text in them.

    With Instagram particularly you have to make your posts aesthetically pleasing, stamping a company logo on them will be an eyesore and put isn’t really in line with what the platform is all about. Anyone who really wants to can steal your image anyway if that’s what you’re worried about.

    Also: posting horizontal images. Instagram is a vertical platform and only vertical pictures take advantage of all the space you can be using.

    Of course, if you’re famous enough you can do whatever you want and break all the rules. Gary Vee for example has a laughably bad feed Instagram feed but still gets thousands of likes because of his fame and “hustle fans”, not because his posts are any good.

  • climbonapply24head

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 5:37 pm

    Creating everything by committee thus having no discernible attitude. Too vanilla.

    brand images and attitudes need rules and guidelines. Sometimes managers don’t have those ideas and rules in place to abide by and instead let those be drawn adhoc. Good for some situations but debate-ably not ideal for an overarching communication strategy that people stay engaged with for an amount of time.

    While gathering input and double checking everything is great; I think too often that I see managers overwhelmed by the depth of the internet and they make content by committee that tries too hard to make everyone happy.
    This really castrates a brand and makes it part of the noise that pollutes the social media landscape.

    I’m not saying brands have all have “an edge,” or “an attitude.” Still when too much content is made by committee I think most savvy consumers online learn to recognize that blandness.

    Maybe your brand is bland. That’s fine. But I’d be so bold to say each product and brand has a base that you aren’t fully realizing if you don’t play to an attitude that would at least attempt to define a broad swathe of them. It could be super specific as well, and the important thing is to try. This is the type of organic hype and involvement you need to be aware of.

    Pitfalls of being too engaged is an increasing consumer call for CSR (corporate social responsibility.) Lessons from political theory state that progressiveness is a treadmill that might never end. How progressive or “responsible” can a brand be without being hypocritical? So while the rewards and organic vitality of well managed brand will be great the responsibility to maintain and fall in line with those users expectations of social responsibility from that corporate perspective might be too much to handle. IE the rise of fair trade organizations, responsibly sourced materials, and anti-sweat shop; the corporate realty is still the manufacturing is cheaper abroad and exploited.

    You don’t need to be a political theorist to manage responsibility but you do have to be socially responsible – at least work to improve – to do well.

  • Junkstar

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 5:55 pm

    Not spending enough time listening while spending too much time churning out garbage content.

  • CondorPerplex

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 6:06 pm

    Word of advice to anyone going into any new position: the position you are taking was filled by someone else, who might have had allies or other people that liked this person. Coming in as the lord and savior will certainly rub part of your now colleagues the wrong way.

  • TheMacMan

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 7:37 pm

    Using hashtags on Facebook. Using too many hashtags. Posting irrelevant hashtags (no one is searching for #winning #cool #funny etc…).

    Not truly understanding who their audience is. This is common all around in marketing and sales. Don’t just assume you know who they are.

    The biggest, not making social social. Social is a 2-way conversation. It shouldn’t just be a brand blasting their message and not having a 2-way dialog with their following.

  • k_rocker

    Guest
    August 12, 2020 at 7:38 pm

    Not using Facebooks business manager.
    Not investing time in creating consistent look/feel/graphics
    Not knowing how to run sales funnels (tends to be more ‘marketing’ than sales)
    Not understanding utm’s
    Missed knowledge on tracking, pixels, analytics
    Thinking that it is either/or with Google/FB
    Not being able to use datastudio (saves us hours each week!)

  • Starryglare

    Guest
    August 13, 2020 at 4:47 am

    Above well written and decorated, your content has to be *useful and continuing.*

    ​

    If the content is well written pointless “fluff”, you will probably get a like and a follow, but that follower will end up dropping after seeing more fluff, and they aren’t likely to engage, making it hardly better than a bot.

    ​

    Useful content will get someone who is interested in coming back and engaging in some ways. Think of something educational about the industry to your target audience. Make a series of posts on the topics, and spread them out through your sales pitches and “fluff”. These posts will be useful to the people who you want to target and they will be more likely to stay tuned.

    ​

    The best example is the makeup brands. Almost each one of them has some kind of educational piece that they post, like application tutorials, “how its made” etc. and then the fluff and sales are suddenly less annoying.

  • Pickled-Love-365

    Guest
    August 13, 2020 at 6:26 am

    Being a promotion strategist myself, I have seen many companies focus on fluff and too many posts. I suggest you go fro quality, it is steady and slow, but worth every drop of effort.

  • Gustfaint

    Guest
    August 13, 2020 at 8:07 am

    Using Engagement Rate as a KPI

  • SnoopDonuts

    Guest
    August 13, 2020 at 11:31 am

    having managed social media, and grew it to a few thousand followers, i’ve made a lot of mistakes and learnt a ton from.

    here are my top ones

    **general**

    * *applying one size fits all.* never works. it’s okay to have different goals for diff platforms (community building for FB, support for twitter, engagement on linkedin and insta).
    * *followers increase as the ONLY kpi*. follower count is a good indicator but what if you have a 100,000 followers who don’t interact, engage or listen to stuff you say?

    **measurement**

    * *not having success indicators* (define what success would look like). Likes, link clicks cannot be a measure.
    * *measuring everything b’cos you can* (sometimes it’s okay not measure). i know it contradicts what i said above. but- you should not measure success/failure with leads, impressions and other irrelevant metrics.

    **content**

    * ***inconsistency in posting****-* enough said!
    * to much of ‘me me’ or ***using your channel as a broadcast***
    * not customising posts/images to suit specific platforms.
    * no.of posts as metric. ***quality>quantity.***

    ***pro tip****- i’ve found a lot of success in social teams that double up as communication/pr team (or roll up to them). invest in personal branding of your top 5% employees on social.*

    people trust individuals over brand. that way you’re fighting one less battle.

  • MilesWeb

    Guest
    August 13, 2020 at 11:45 am

    I have observed the below things:

    * Posting several times in a day. This should be avoided. Also, check for the best posting times on each social media platform.
    * Copying from other brands. You can refer other brands to study them but don’t completely copy them. Instead create something better than others to engage your audience.
    * Using apps to increase your followers. This isn’t good at all. The more natural followers you gain, the more popular your brand will be. Let people come to you and understand your business and give feedback. This is going to help you in improving your business and knowing what your visitors are expecting from you.

  • Othuolothuol

    Guest
    August 13, 2020 at 12:41 pm

    Client relationship. Have a set of rules that will govern your relationship with clients to prevent them from overstepping boundaries.

  • Plant-B

    Guest
    September 4, 2020 at 6:43 pm

    As the first step, think logically. Does what you do really solve a client’s problem? Sometimes clients just come with the ready made approach: I want IG page like brand X. But when you dig deeper into what problem they want to solve, you see that IG won’t solve it until they have other more fundamental issues solved.

    Not every client needs to invest money in social media if, for example, their distribution channels suck. As a good social media manager, you need to take this into account and prevent yourself from useless and unfulfilling tasks and prevent your client from spending money on something they don’t really need at the moment.

    Other points:

    respect clients established brand and design code. Sometimes I see inexperienced SMM doing stuff that pleases his/her eyes, but totally dismissing brand’s tone of voice or design. Work with it

    Please, no memes! Nothing can be more unappealing than when a brand tries to run on existing fads. Leave memes for communities.

    Drop your ego. You are here to solve clients’ problems, not to express yourself. Be client service-oriented.

    And good luck 🙂