Are you looking to build your brand name on social media? If so, you must be very careful with every activity you carry out online.
Any mistake your brand commits can cost you probably what took years to build. Worse, it may take extra years to build back the lost trust or your overall brand reputation.
Depending on how you choose to use it, social media can be a successful digital marketing platform. In this case, it can be one that constantly cultivates a positive brand sentiment. Thus, you can maintain a solid emotional connection with your clients.
On the other hand, it can be a resource-wasting board that may position your business awkwardly. In such instances, your brand can be out of touch with present and potential clients. Even worse, your trademark can be mocked and end up avoided altogether.
In short, social media can be a powerful marketing tool that boosts a good brand name. But, when misused, the various sites can negatively impact your business. Such cases can cost your business’s goodwill and potential customers.
To help you avoid such frustrating business moments, let’s find out the worst social media mistakes brands make. We’ll also discover how you can fix those mistakes.
Let’s delve in.
- Tarnishing Your Brand Name
Businesses spend extra money to promote their brand names via different forms of advertisements. Every year, billions of dollars are channeled into marketing goods and services online.
The main focus of marketers is often to build their brand name’s reputation. But, do you know that it may take only one silly mistake, perhaps by a team member, to tarnish the brand name? This might cost your company tons of money, especially if the mistake is not resolved.
A spoiled brand name may result from instances where you’re forced to deal with some negative effects of social media on your business. Imagine losing your customer engagement or your trust with fans you relied upon to maintain a good brand. Indeed, this can be the most pathetic moment for your business.
You may be forced to rebrand, meaning that you have to start over the process of changing your corporate image. This may imply that your business name changes, amongst other significant alterations.
If your trademark faces any negative impact and its reputation is tarnished, you’ll have to find out how a brand name is built. This will help you know how to come up with a brand name that may change how people will perceive your company.
In finding out how a brand name is built, you’ll discover various ways of brand naming and know things like:
- brand names from Acronyms
- Invented Brand names
- Suggestive Brand names
- Descriptive Brand names
- Examples of good brand names
- Name design ideasCoined Brand names
- Targeting Quantity Over the Quality of Followers
The truth is that online-based companies will do anything to acquire more fans. This can be in the form of followers or likes. Some could even risk buying followers.
But, many do not know that the number of likes does not equal sales. According to Harvard Business Review, simply liking a brand found on Facebook does not change or increase purchase behavior.
So, how do you handle this?
You need to aim at quality instead of quantity. It adds more value for your company to have 500,000 highly engaged clients than 5,000,000 mere fans or followers.
The fans may not have any interest in your business. Only liking your brand does not imply that the followers will translate into buyers to boost your sales.
Thus, your brand should focus on enhancing loyal, lasting, and true fans. Such people are those that become buyers or brand advocates.
- Over-Posting and Posting Irrelevant Content
You might want to pass your messages across different social media platforms. This is fine, but too many posts can bore people and cause them to dislike and unfollow your pages.
According to Brock Communications, overposting on social media is the primary reason users often unfollow brands. Just one or two relevant brand posts in a day initiate 32% more “like” rates and 73% increased comment rates. This is when compared to posting more than three times a day.
When looking to promote your brand or increase engagement on social media channels, it may be enticing to flood your followers’ news feeds with new posts.
But, this always becomes adverse when users get irritated seeing many posts from one brand. It may become unbearable for them, and the only option is often to unfollow your page.
Indeed, over-posting can automatically cause your brand to be ignored online. Besides, many users may end their engagement with your brand entirely. This is if they are tired of seeing too many of your posts every day.
So, you should take time and find out what is appropriate and relevant to your fans and followers. It helps to post wisely, perhaps a few times a day instead of severally every hour.
Again, brands should actively listen to their audience’s interests instead of posting as a norm or routine. Doing this will help you post up-to-date, relevant content, one that ignites meaningful interaction.
- Treating All Social Media Platforms in a Similar Fashion
Every media platform differs in its functioning. Each comes with its own rules, customs, language, and audiences. So before making your brand’s presence known on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it helps to learn how people engage and share on that particular social network.
Many businesses tend to blast the same message on all their registered platforms. They fail to realize that this may portray you as a fake, spam-like, or impersonal brand to the audiences. As a result, you can spoil your good brand name.
But, you can avoid being depicted as a fake brand. You can also stop being labeled as a banner ad only looking to promote your goods and not inform or educate customers to add value. This is possible by making a deliberate effort to understand how each social networking platform works. Then, you can customize your posts and content to be platform-specific.
- Registering on Many Social Media Sites
Please do not be misled that being on all social media channels will boost your brand name and identity. In fact, the fewer channels you are on the more focus and better content you can post.
Focussing more on fewer platforms can help you get the results you want. Your time and efforts on the fewer yet essential target audiences will always be worth it.
Remember, every additional social site your brand is active on means extra time and effort to create customized content for that platform. You also need more time to engage and connect with your fans on that platform continually.
So, take stock of your media channels and consider which platforms are working for your business and which ones seem not to work.
That way, you can get off the social media platforms that do not seem to suit your brand or do not perform well. Once you take this step, you can double down on the time and effort placed on the channels that work for you.
A particular company states that they had to take a break from Snapchat and instead focus on Instagram. This is after Instagram introduced similar story features. But, they later returned to Snapchat. It was after they followed up with the Snapchat team. And the team ended up creating a more inclusive and positive social media experience.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to your online venture, you must play safe. The only way you can build a positive impression of your brand products and services on popular media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ —is to avoid potentially costly social media mistakes.
Ensure you stop targeting quantity over the quality of followers. Stop over-posting and posting irrelevant content on the channels. Also, do not treat all social media platforms similarly. And lastly, avoid registering on too many media sites.
Doing all this will put you on track towards setting examples of good brand names. You’ll also manage to attract the right audience and maintain your existing clients.
