How Can You Fail at Social Media Marketing When Starting an eCommerce Business?

You can’t ignore social media marketing these days! It’s where most people spend their free time, which is why social media marketing is so effective. As for further proof, Barbara Corcoran, one of the sharks in Shark Tank, has said that she won’t invest in companies that don’t take social media seriously!

While many know the importance, many still fail to reap the benefits of this marketing technique. In this article, we’ll explain why people miserably fail at social media marketing.

#1 – Not Having a Clear Social Media Strategy

Social media isn’t a piece of cake! It requires more than just posting pictures and videos. Thus, successful companies create a clear social media strategy.

What should you include in your social media marketing strategy? Here are the most important ones:

• What is your Main Objective? Just being on social media isn’t going to benefit you! Instead, you’ll need to think of a reason for being there. For example, this could be brand awareness or getting leads.
• Your Content Plan: To get traffic to your eCommerce store, you must post consistent content on your social media profiles. It’s wise to create a plan for it to understand how much content you need to produce each week.

If you have these two planned out, you’re already ahead of your competitors! However, it would help if you also considered other things, such as influencer marketing, advertising, etc.

#2 – Not Engaging With Your Followers 

As mentioned previously, there’s more to social media than posting content. Another big part of social media is engaging with your followers! Nowadays, people think of your social media as part of customer service.

Answering their questions is a must. It’s best if you can do it as quickly as possible! According to a study, about 37% of people expect companies’ social media profiles to answer their comments in just 30 minutes.

Make sure you engage with your followers by answering their DMs and comments.

#3 – Not Knowing Your Audience

Do you want to know why so few people like your posts? There are many reasons, such as the algorithm, but a big reason is that your content might not be relevant or engaging to your target audience.

Instead of posting the content you think works, you should first understand who your audience is! You can do that through market research. Only then will you truly understand what your audience wants from you.

Here are a couple of things you should do:

• Browse Niche Forums: One of the best places to get information about your audience is through niche forums. You’ll learn exactly what your customers are looking for from you.
• Look at your Competitor’s Social Media Sites: One of the best ways of understanding what content works for your niche is by looking at your competitors. I recommend looking at the best content and finding a pattern. Then replicate it with your social media profiles, but with a twist.

#4 – Promoting & Selling Too Much

We know that there’s a lot of money to be made with social media. However, only posting discounts for your dropshipping store won’t boost your sales.

That’s because it goes against the reason why people use social media. They don’t go there to shop. Instead, they’re looking to catch up with their friends and family or look for some entertaining content.

If you’re looking to create an online presence, you should, most of the time, give some type of value to your followers. For example, you could provide quick tips or just product photos. And then, from time to time, also encourage them to shop.

#5 – Not Tracking Your Analytics 

No matter who you are and how much you know about social media, you’ll probably make mistakes. Instead of mindlessly posting the same content and wondering why your audience isn’t engaging, it’s best to look at the analytics and make changes.

Here are some things you should look out for:

• Engagement: This tells you how many people liked your content; the more likes you have, the better the content is. A good thing to do is replicate the high-engagement content.
• Views/Impressions: That shows how many people saw your content. It helps you to understand how good of a hashtag research job you did.

#6 – Using too Much Automation

You should understand that you need to work on many things by now! Naturally, you might be looking for automation software! While that’s usually a good thing, you should ensure you don’t overdo it.

The problem with automation is that you won’t be able to have any human connection with your audience. That’s essential for success in social media marketing!

How should you use automation? While there isn’t a definitive way to do it, here’s how I would do it.

First, I’d use a scheduling app for posting content on all my platforms. That would help me to stay focused on the tasks at hand and not have to worry about posting. You can use apps like Buffer and Hootsuite.

Additionally, I’d use a third-party app to reply to comments and messages. That helps me stay focused on the task without switching between apps and being distracted by my feed.

Conclusion

As you can see, the main reasons why many companies fail with social media are due to two things: 

• Not taking social media marketing seriously. 
• Trying to find a quick way to success through automation.

Try implementing the following six tips and get traffic from your social media accounts.

(Contributed by Andreas Ojala & Hermes Fang)