15 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid in 2023

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Avoid these 15 social media mistakes if you want to see better results from your content in 2023.

Want to make the most of your social media marketing strategy? Trying to get your social media platforms to deliver a better ROI for your business? Here’s the good news – it’s much easier than you might think.

If you want to achieve more effective social media results, then you’ll need to make sure you’re not making some of the most common social media mistakes. By avoiding these issues, you could see a major difference in how your social media efforts perform.

This means more brand awareness, more traffic, and more customers.

So, if you want to enhance your social media success, here are some of the most critical mistakes you’ll need to avoid.

Being on Every Social Media Platform
Not Using User-Generated Content
Quantity Over Quality
Not Engaging With Your Audience
Not Embracing Feedback (Including Negative Feedback)
Using the Same Content on All Platforms
Not Working With Influencers
Ignoring Your Competitors
Posting at the Wrong Time
Not Targeting Specific Audiences
Not Using Video
Ignoring New Features
Not Making the Most of Captions and Your Bio
Buying Followers
Sticking to the Same Boring Strategy

1. Being on Every Social Media Platform

One of the first social media mistakes brands make is trying to cover too much ground.

Yes, you need a solid social media strategy, and yes, each platform offers potential for your business to tap into a new audience. However, this certainly doesn’t mean you should be spreading yourself too thin and trying to focus on every social media channel.

There are two main reasons for this:

Each social media channel requires a lot of time and effort
Each social media channel has a different audience with different interests. This doesn’t always align with your brand and social media marketing goals

You’ll make a far greater impact by doing well on a small handful (or even one) of social media channels that your audience is on. The important thing here is understanding your audience and where they’re most active.

Imagine spending an hour every day creating TikTok videos if all your customers are on LinkedIn. This would be a massive waste of your social media marketing efforts.

So, whether you’re starting or refining your social media marketing strategy, start small. You can always grow your social media marketing efforts over time, but you’ll have a harder time eliminating channels you already have.

2. Not Using User-Generated Content

When it comes to successful social media marketing, you shouldn’t be the only person posting about your brand. Instead, you want to get your audience to post about you. This is user-generated content (UGC), and it’s incredibly powerful.

User-generated content creates a big impact on social media. This is mainly because it’s a form of social proof. People tend to trust other people to that they can relate a lot more than they trust marketing messages from brands. By generating UGC and displaying it on your social channels, you’ll encourage more people to trust your brand and buy from you.

When you generate UGC on social media, be sure to utilize it. You could repost it on your profile, include it in stories, comment on it, and engage with it. This will help to make it more visible and impactful.

One of the best social media tips to generate more UGC is to run a giveaway. You can create a social media contest that encourages users to post about your brand. You could also create a branded hashtag challenge to help you go viral. Working with micro-influencers is another great way to generate UGC – more on this later.

Image: Wordstream

3. Quantity Over Quality

If you’ve done some research into the best times to post on social media, then you probably know how important it is to post frequently and consistently. Yes, this is true. At the same time, never produce too many social media posts if it means sacrificing quality.

It’s far more important to create quality, valuable, interesting, or entertaining content than it is to post a lot of content.

Focusing on quantity over quality often results in rushed posts and content that doesn’t have much of an impact. This can annoy your audience and result in less engagement over time. This will cause more harm to your social media marketing strategy than good.

So, if you feel like you’re focusing too much on creating a lot of content, then slow down and shift that focus to creating quality content. Three posts a week is still plenty for maintaining a strong social media presence, and this gives you enough time to work on the quality of each post.

This will help you build an audience that is genuinely interested in what you post – resulting in greater levels of engagement.

An important tip here is to use a platform for scheduling and planning out your content. If you plan your content in advance, you’ll have a better picture of exactly what you’re going to post.

This can help you avoid rushing posts, giving you more time to focus on the quality of your content.

4. Not Engaging With Your Audience

This is one of the most common social media mistakes. It’s also super easy to avoid making.

Never forget the “social” part of social media. Your job as a social media manager isn’t only to create and post content; it’s also to engage with users.

Make sure to spend some time responding to comments, answering questions, and ensuring people can get in touch with you through social media. This is important because users expect to be able to connect and engage with brands on social media.

So, spend some time each day sifting through comments and engaging with your audience. At the same time, spend time engaging with other brands and pages that you like. The more active you are engaging on social media, the more visible your page will become. This will help you grow a larger, more interested audience.

5. Not Embracing Feedback (Including Negative Feedback)

On a related topic to engaging with your audience, always take the time to embrace and respond to feedback – even when it’s negative.

No matter what your brand does and how well-respected you are, there’s always the chance that you’re going to get some negative feedback in your comments section at some stage. The last thing you want is to just leave this hanging.

Respond to the comment as soon as possible, acknowledge their concern, and provide a solution. This helps the negative commenter feel more at ease. It also shows other users that your brand cares, which is important for developing a positive brand image and building trust.

So while you can’t always avoid negative feedback, you can try to turn a bad situation into a good one.

On this note, never delete negative comments. This does the exact opposite of using social media to develop trust with your audience.

social media feedback — *Image: SocialPilot*

6. Using the Same Content On All Platforms

Each social media channel is different, with a unique audience. This means the type of content that people want to see on each channel is different. A common social media mistake is creating a post and simply reposting it across each of your channels.

You can still use the same theme, but make sure that you optimize it for the channel you’re posting on. The more you understand your audience and their desires, the better you’ll be able to do this.

Spend some time on different social media platforms and understand what kind of content is most popular. Also, look at your social media metrics and pay attention to what works best on your different channels.

Don’t worry; this doesn’t mean you’ll be spending hours of extra time creating content. It just means you’ll need to pay attention to how you repurpose your existing content to match the platform and the audience that uses it.

7. Not Working With Influencers

We’re living in the age of the influencer. If you’re not making use of influencers and tapping into their enormous potential, then you’re missing out on major social media growth possibilities.

These days, any brand can work with an influencer.

No, you don’t need a huge budget or celebrity connections. This is because micro-influencers are available in practically every niche. Not only is it easier for small businesses to work with micro-influencers it’s also a great way to generate powerful social proof, as micro-influencers feel more relatable and authentic.

Getting some good influencer exposure puts your brand in front of a whole new audience. Not only this, but influencers hold a great deal of power. Their audiences trust their judgment, so if they recommend your brand, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to attract a whole new audience.

Make sure you choose to work with influencers that make sense for your brand and that their audience matches your target audience. There’s not much point in getting a lot of brand exposure if it’s from the wrong people.

8. Ignoring Your Competitors

Far too many brands focus on their own social accounts only. If you want to improve your success on all social media platforms, then you’ll need to stay up to date with what your competitors are doing.

Following and monitoring your competitors will help you stay ahead of trends and identify new opportunities. Try to figure out what other brands your target audience is following, and take a look at what content of theirs gets the most engagement.

Social media is an ever-changing landscape, so it’s important to always stay up to date with what’s happening. You should also spend time following other popular social media accounts, even if they’re not directly involved in your niche. Doing this can help you identify trends that you can add your own spin on.

9. Posting at the Wrong Time

This is an easy one to get right. Before you start uploading content and posting on your different accounts, make sure that you’re scheduling your posts for the optimal time. This would be when your audience is most active on social media, which can help you gain more engagement straight away.

More engagement boosts your post’s visibility, which can help you spread brand awareness even more.

Far too many brands simply post on social media without thinking about what time is best. If you post when the bulk of your audience is asleep, you can expect that post to get minimal engagement and reach.

Make use of your analytics tools within each social media platform to understand where your audience is located and what times they’re most active. For more information on this, check out our guides for the best times to post on TikTok and Instagram.

10. Not Targeting Specific Audiences

Everyone is on social media, but this doesn’t mean that you need to target everyone.

What’s most important is that you develop a very specific target audience and focus your social media marketing efforts on them. You could have a slightly different audience for each platform. Heck, you could even target multiple audiences on the same platform. Just make sure that you understand this audience and create content that aligns with their specific interests.

One great way to do this is to focus on niche communities within social media platforms. For example, you could target #MomTok on TikTok if moms are your target audience. You could also join groups that your audience is active in or work with very niche micro-influencers.

Again, ensure you understand the type of content that these audiences are interested in. Do they want to be entertained? Do they want to learn something?

Far too many brands try to reach as broad an audience as possible. While a lot of followers might look good, this doesn’t reflect engagement or sales for your business. Rather focus on a smaller but more specific audience. This will help you attract customers, which is really the aim of marketing, after all.

11. Not Using Video

If you’re not using video on social media right now, what are you even doing?! Video is hands down the most engaging form of content on social media. It’s also the most popular right now.

Since the rise of TikTok, practically all social media platforms have introduced short-form videos of some kind. These videos are highly addictive. They’re also one of the best ways to go viral and boost your engagement.

Don’t be afraid. Everyone can create awesome video content on social media. You don’t need to understand cinematography or have a show-stopping film set. All you need is to use the camera on your smartphone and have fun with it. After all, the best social media videos are the most authentic ones.

Try to follow trends and other brands, and see if you can recreate some of their popular video ideas. Soon enough, you’ll become a champion at video content. Ignoring video content right now would just be silly.

If you’re worried about inspiration, then check out these great TikTok ideas and Reels ideas.