5 social media challenges your business must overcome

Social media has had a remarkable impact on businesses over the years. Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have transformed the way that people communicate. They also have changed the way that businesses interact with customers. Social media’s influence actually runs deeper than customer engagement, like product development and market research are launching successful campaigns.

However, while there is successful social media campaigns, there are still many social media challenges we’re figuring out. Like if a campaign does not return the same results as a successful one, straight away you will assume that the marketing company did something wrong. That’s just the nature of social media, where two campaigns the same can give different results.

Below are 5 of the most common social media challenges

1. Developing a social media strategy – Creating a social media strategy can be overwhelming but you need to know is exactly what it is before creating one. Social media strategy is a plan with everything you hope to achieve for your business through the use of social networks. The purpose of a social media strategy is to guide your actions, but it’ll also be a measure by which you determine whether you’re succeeding or failing.

Tips: Create a list of social media objectives and goals. If you have social media, then you should run a social media audit. This will help you assess your current social media use, what’s working, what’s failing and what can be improved upon. Once your social media strategy is in place, repeat your audit quarterly so you can keep tabs on your performance.

• Measuring social media ROI – What is social media ROI? This is what your business gets back from social media marketing. Although social media ROI is different from traditional online marketing. It can be hard to see the value of your Tweet or post getting shared compared to clicks on an ad. Social media ROI is built on your specific business goals and how you will go about it differ from another businesses’ approach.

Tips: Have a strategic goal or goals in place. Find a tool that can track progress and get information on what you are getting back from social media.

• Which social media platform to use – Stats have shown that around 90% of people use social media to communicate directly with brands. So knowing this, your business should be active on social media. Although it could be difficult on deciding which platform to build a presence on, there is an easy solution and it all comes down to your target audience. You will need to familiarize yourself with the demographics for each social network and see if your target audience is actively contributing because if you’re not reaching the right people, then you’re not meeting your business goals.

Tips: Find out social networks offer targeting capabilities. Use a social media analytics tool to monitor engagement with your account and audience demographics.

• Engaging and keeping relations – Social media is a two-way communication channel, but it is often used as a promotional mechanism. While marketers use social networks as broadcasting outlets, 90% of customers use social as a way to communicate directly with brands. Using social media is a good way to build your brands awareness and attract potential new customers. However, you have to think about what you will have to do in order to retain them. But you can’t always be selling and to increase brand loyalty, you will need to focus on developing good relationship with your audience by engaging and answering any questions.

Tips: Regularly check on social profiles and engage with customers. Post fresh content frequently.

• Increasing your reach through shares – Using social media signals such as retweets and Facebook shares can help generate brand awareness. Though it is not always as easy as asking for them, engagement is a huge part of generating brand awareness and marketing. So you should be making sure it’s something people can engage with. Experiment with different types of content and explore new ways of capturing the attention of your followers.

Tips: To increase your reach through social shares, simply start by optimizing your content by making sure that the content you’re publishing is interesting and something that your audience would find valuable. Keep up with trends and monitor which posts your target demographic is engaging with.

Not doing well with social media marketing? Read more about the social media marketing strategy we can offer you to stay on top of your competitors!