It’s already abundantly clear that social media marketing is a huge factor in how businesses develop their online presence and connect with their audience. It can be frustrating, then, when despite your best efforts, your social network clout seems to go nowhere and you don’t see the growth you were hoping for. If this is the situation you find yourself in, here are a few things you can do to help get things back on the right track.
1. Be patient. If you’ve only had your social media accounts active for two weeks and you want to know why you don’t have a million followers yet, slow down and breathe a little. Building up a social following takes time, effort, and a lot of patience. As long as your numbers are growing in terms of overall trend, you might just need to keep plugging away, especially in the first three months.
2. Have a look at what went wrong. If things were going well and then suddenly they weren’t, have a look at what you did right before everything went south. Fans don’t just disappear for no reason, so if you can assess your social media behavior in terms of how your resulting numbers change, you can start to get a better feel for what is working for you and what isn’t.
3. Don’t forget what social media is all about. Even now, it’s still common to see businesses treating social networks like traditional advertising outlets, with constant one-way marketing messages and spam-like streams of aggressive selling. This completely misses the point of social media, which is of course to engage in conversation and get some two-way communication going with your audience. It shouldn’t be all marketing all the time.
4. Get an expert to take a look. If all else fails and you really can’t figure out where you’re going wrong, don’t be afraid to get a social media marketing expert in to assess your accounts and give you some insight. Just getting a second pair of well-trained eyes to look at what you’re doing can be a great way to find out what mistakes you’re making, what things you’re doing right, and how to fine-tune your social marketing efforts to get the best results. This relatively small investment can translate into much larger returns in terms of audience numbers.
