5 Misguided Myths About Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has been of interest to marketers and business people since at least 2007, but has been steadily popular since 2011 according to Google Trends. The need to fill your funnel from your fans and followers has grown, as has the mythology around the process of doing so.

Let’s take a look at some of the most misguided myths social media marketing manifests

1. Social Media Marketing Is Freehands-1167618_1920

Sure, signing yourself and your company up for a social media account is free, and you may think that since you aren’t paying to advertise on the platform you can get away with your marketing plan for free!

The truth is, no matter what you do on social media, your marketing is going to cost you either time, money or both.

Your team’s time and effort are valuable, and the more of it you pour into your social media marketing campaign the better ROI you will likely see. However, time and effort cost the business money, so just know that nothing is free.

2. Social Media ROI Can’t Be Measured

When most people first start utilizing social media for marketing, they focus on the metrics in front of them: likes, shares, comments, etc.

But it’s important to go beyond these metrics and focus on two things at the same time: building a community, then driving that community to your website/landing page. In order to know if you’re building a community, you focus on those likes, comments and shares. To know if you’re converting people from your social media page to your website or to a sale, you’ll need to utilize Google Analytics and build trackable links for your social media posts.

3. Every Social Media Platform Is Valuable

Depending on your industry and needs, you’ll need different social media platforms. The demographics who use the site, it’s functionality and purpose, as well as how it is accessed will all play into whether the platform is valuable to you and can be used to increase sales.

For instance, a consulting business will see a lot more ROI on investing in LinkedIn, while a restaurant will see better results through Facebook and Pinterest or Instagram. You may not have the resources to tackle multiple sites at once, so be sure you choose the right ones to concentrate on.

4. Social Media Marketing Is It’s Own Strategy

Truly, social media marketing is best done in conjunction with a series of other strategies, like content marketing, search engine optimization, reputation management and more.

Content marketing helps you build content on your website worth sharing, which then draws people through to your website and makes them more likely to convert.

Search engine optimization helps your website flow better and become easier to read and navigate while making it rank higher in search engines, meaning people are more likely to enjoy working with you and like or follow you.

Reputation management helps monitor and direct people to leave you positive reviews on sites like Facebook and Google, which are also social media sites. This means your social sites will pull more weight with people, making them easier to convert.

5. Making Social Posts Mobile-Friendly Isn’t Worth It

If you still believe mobile phones aren’t where people do most of their web browsing – as well as nearly all of their social networking – you are living in the past. Nearly 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices these days, so it’s extremely important to make sure you’re optimizing your social media posts for mobile devices. You may be writing them on a computer at work, but that’s not how your followers are going to read them!