There’s so many things you can do with social media marketing, there are also things that you should NOT do. Think of these as the worst pieces of advice people could give you for social media marketing, and do whatever you can to NOT follow them.

1. Don’t set a goal – NOT!

You want to to grow your clients – make sure you focus on how. Instead of trying to achieve all your client objectives at once, set a clear progression of goals, like dealing with brand awareness before conversions.

2. Don’t have a clearly defined strategy – NOT!

Once you set a goal, it’s important your content is focused on your client’s goal – but you still need to consider the customer journey. You have to make sure that each piece of content moves people forward along the sales funnel.

3. Put out too much content – NOT!

It’s tempting when you have a goal to blast your audience into submission with as much great content as possible. If you spam up their feed, then they will just ignore or block you.

4. Put out too little content – NOT!

If you get afraid that you’re spamming your audience (or you don’t have enough good content) then it’s easy to not put out much. Do that and your audience will forget you.

5. Change your strategy too quickly – NOT!

If something isn’t working, then you should just change it – right? Wrong. You need to understand why it wasn’t working. A simple tweak in the funnel can save a campaign.

7. Take the data at face value – NOT!

When things really don’t work – you still need to drill down into the data of your campaign. Something that was misused in a conversion campaign could be great for brand building.

7. Don’t try new things – NOT!

Once you find something that works, it’s easy to think it’s a winning formula, until it stops working. You need to try new ways to reach your audience and combat ad fatigue.

8. Focus too much on the competition – NOT!

If your client’s competitors put out an ad based on quality, it’s tempting to respond in kind. If they put out a special offer, so can you.However, that means you define your client by their competitor, rather than their Unique Selling points. Stay away of your client’s branding.

9. Scale your campaign too quickly – NOT!

When you have a working campaign, make sure it’s appropriate to scale it. If it’s not, your cost per person will rise and you’ll be accruing cost from a lot more people. Be careful.

10. Forgot why people are on social media – NOT!

It’s so easy to get focused on the client objective, you can forget about why the customer is on social media. They want engagement, entertainment and education from social media and the content you put on it.

What you SHOULD do!

Use your common sense. Most of these mistakes can be avoided if you take the time to think them through before. Make sure you pay attention to the things that work, and pay even more attention to the things that don’t – so you don’t make the same mistakes again. You will make mistakes, but the thing you absolutely SHOULD do is learn from them.

Zachary Jarvis is a Digital Marketer with one thing on his mind: Results.

Uninspired by the never ending talk of ‘vanity metrics’ in the world of digital marketing, Magnate was founded – the ‘Social-First’ marketing agency. On the very rare occasion he isn’t watching Step Brothers in his spare time – you’ll find Zachary in the thick of social platforms, learning what makes us tick. This is driven by a fascination (perhaps a slight obsession…) with market trends and consumer behaviours.