You know that your business needs to use social media right? Of course, you do! Everyone has or uses some sort of account or profile. If you are not showing the value of the problem you have the solution for, then you are falling short in your marketing. When a social media campaign is executed properly, the results can be huge.

A Social media campaign needs to be set up with diligence, a goal and with a clear action. Establishing a great social media strategy and in-depth, content playbook is more than just putting out posts, updates and promotions. It is sharing information about the business YOU built, illustrating the core values of the service, product or expertise you provide.

When you can engage new people and interact with your target audience on a day to day basis then you can say the strategy is successful. So if it is that easy, why do so many strategies and campaigns flop?

In our experience, there are a few mistakes that are commonly made, but these are easy to correct.

Here are five to prevent your campaign from failing.

1. A Social Media Campaign Needs Research.

We recommend doing research and a lot of it. Working with a marketing agency or consultant can help you with this from a time, a target and ideal client perspective but at the end of the day, no one knows your business like you do. It is important to know your goals and ideal client before you create a campaign.

2. Technology will make this a lot easier.

There are a ton of tools out there, countless software to help make your campaign a success. Being able to track results of a campaign through Facebook Insights is great but can sometimes be confusing. An easy solution we use in-house is Report Garden. We can pick and choose what to display to our clients; the information they want to see and not all of the fluff.

Make sure you market consistently without consuming too much time; it might be a good idea to look at software to help make this easier. Social Media Management tools like Sendible, Sprout HootSuite, and HeyOrca are an expense, but it’s an expense that will save you a lot of time. A lot of these options also have free versions that can help you out of the gate.

3) Know your audience.

This slides back into step 1 by knowing your ideal client. At the same time social media is a funny beast, you never know who you are going to reach, but you can certainly try your best to control it. Through targeting and re-targeting methods it is easy to isolate your ideal client and target them. Although brand awareness is fantastic, it might not be the goal, so knowing your audience is crucial to a successful campaign.

Approaching a social media campaign should not be about your business, but the target audience.

4) Everyone social network is different.

Facebook isn’t the same as Instagram and Instagram isn’t the same as LinkedIN or Twitter, so why are we seeing so many of the same posts on the same networks? Treat each network different. Your graphic that looks great on Facebook won’t look so hot on Instagram, your link in the description isn’t going to be clickable like it is on Facebook so you need to be aware of this when pushing the same promotion to every platform.

5) Be consistent.

Social campaigns and strategy demand consistency. Knowing when to post, what to use for hashtags and ensuring you are on the right path to creating engaging content. It’s not enough to have awesome content if no one sees it. When you are consistent with a plan, people will get in the habit of searching you to check on your latest post.

Creating consistent and valuable information. Give give give and ask. The Gary V methodology.

Get started with a Marketing Strategy that will work for your business!