Just like most other things, social media has its own taboos. Unlike most other things, however, the repercussions of crossing the taboos on social media are immediate and massive.
When it comes to handling your brand’s social media presence, there are certain things you must avoid doing. These are the taboos; if you do them, the consequences may be tough and if you avoid them, you are safe.
As a person who is trying to improve your brand’s performance online (who isn’t?), you must ensure that you avoid the following three things. No fuss, let’s get to it.
The 3 Taboos
1. Trying to reach everyone
It’s like a virus that infects every entrepreneur or business. Perhaps due to eagerness to make money (or maybe impact), we tend to think that we can reach everyone online.
This is not the case. In fact, the exact opposite is the real truth: you can make more by trying to reach only a few people.
These few people are not just anybody online, they are what Seth Godin calls your smallest viable market (SVM). Your SVM is the minimum amount of people that will readily do business with your and are enough to keep you in business.
To sell to everybody is to sell to nobody
This maybe 1,000 people, 1,000,000 people, or 1,000,000,000 people. But the point is not about the number of people, it is about the type of people.
This SVM provides little friction when it comes to doing business and they will readily expose themselves to your content.
What you should do instead
-Find the audience that deeply needs what you offer
-Find out their psychographics.
-Devise a strategy to reach them and them alone.
2. Running ads too frequently
Ads work like magic! Or maybe not.
Running ads is an effective way of doing direct marketing. It will get you directly to your customers at the right time. But too much ads will hurt your brand.
Be selective and very careful when it comes to running ads. As much as they offer quick benefits in the instant, they can destroy your marketing efforts in the future.
Brand building requires consistent efforts of posting and engaging with your customers. Overtime, your brand will become popular and you’ll receive more followership.
What you should do instead:
-Learn more about your customers
-Post consistently and engage always
-Run ads when they are absolutely required
3. Using false hashtags
This one may not really cause a direct harm to your customers, but it will definitely annoy the algorithm.
Social media platforms are getting more intelligent at spotting fakes. So, if you publish a post on animal care and you use #bodybuilding, the algorithm may arrest you as time goes on.
Sure, some hashtags have more followers than others. But as a brand, you must make not be overly eager to get more like by using hashtags that are unrelated to your posts.
What you should do instead?
-Use hashtag research tools to find the best performing hashtags for your niche
-Only use related hashtags
-Frequently check hashtags to see if your posts are showing up.
Wait…what’s really at stake here?
Nothing much.
Except that if you ignore these 3 things, you will gradually lose followers and engagement online. Poor online performance will then lead to lower sales (the marketer’s nightmare), which will then lead to insomnia.
Your brand deserves more reach. Get started today!
