Challenges of Social Marketing

Social marketing is an essential part of every digital marketing strategy. No wonder, as nearly half of the planet’s population is active on social media (over 3 billion users). As social media marketers, we are lucky to reach even a fraction of the userbase with any of the posts we share. Furthermore, the industry is changing and maturing while your daily work can still feel chaotic even if you’re doing everything right. Social media strategies need to keep up with the evolution of how social media changes.

It may seem to you, like all the big companies and brands, haven’t figured out everything on social media and that you’re falling behind.  What are you doing wrong? We hope this list of the most common social media marketing challenges will help you find out.

1. Creating a Modern Social Marketing Strategy

Are you planning to “attack?” Yes, then you need to have a strategy. Otherwise, you won’t reach your objectives, even if you know what you want to accomplish. A social media marketing strategy is a roadmap that will bring you to your accomplishments in the shortest time. Before you start planning your social marketing campaign, you need to determine three key things:

• Why are you on social? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you there for the sake of it? Then you should know that you’re burning your resources and time.
• How are you going to succeed? Are you planning to Partner up with influencers? How will you set up a paid advertising budget? You also need to choose the right social media channels, let alone create original visuals and write compelling content.
• How will you measure it? Use data to drive your decision-making. Determine the goals and key metrics, and break the process down into the months, weeks, and days. Focus on daily activities but always revisit the big picture.

2. Cutting through the Noise

There are thousands of brands competing for user attention on social marketing. All of them are talking at the same time, and that generates so much noise. The noise makes it more difficult to stand out, whether you’re using paid or organic placement means to put your content forward. To make your content stand out, try using the video format to your advantage. Its popularity has been on a constant rise in the last few years. You can go with live streams, Stories, 360-degree videos, and GIFS. With video, you’ll make sure that you’re putting out attractive, exciting, and fresh content for your users.

3. Authentic Connections

Today, users can see right through a robotic voice and a corporate brand that’s trying to push their sales up. They want to connect with a humanized voice. Therefore, one of the challenges brands are facing today is connecting with their target audience on a personal and individual level.

One of the ways to do it is by using a social media inbox. You can segment your audience, and:

• Send them personalized messages.
• Maintain conversations.
• Improve the customer experience.
• Add context to each conversation.
• Generate qualified leads

A social inbox allows you to manage all your conversations in one place and respond to every single message and comment on your social media. Also, you can decide to create and build your group on LinkedIn or Facebook, and engage with users in your community.

4. Expanding Your Reach

Creating and publishing content is not enough to get people to follow you. Without promotion, the chances that it will collect dust on your website blog are much higher. Promoting your content, partnering up with influences and other brands, and generating attention is an entirely different challenge. You need to get it to the audience, but more importantly, to the right one. Be proactive and get people to share your content. Visit your industry influencers and follow their followers. Email your coworkers, partners, and followers. Direct message influencers on social media, too. Share your content to relevant LinkedIn and Facebook groups, and republish it on other websites and blogs that accept guest blogs.

5. Maintaining Originality

Social marketing management is a process that requires you to dedicate yourself to it. It consumes your time, and as your business grows, it slowly becomes a full-time job. That’s why one of the most difficult social marketing challenges you’ll face is staying original and creative. Luckily, there are some great tools and hacks that are at your disposal.

Show the behind-the-scenes of your company. People like to have a name and a face to build a trustful relationship with a brand. They want to know who’s the real person behind everything. Give them a look. For example, publish photos or videos of your staff in their working environment.

Original imagery. Posts with images receive a lot more engagement than the ones containing plain text. Visuals directly draw more attention, indeed. They “tell” a lot more and create deeper connections, and are more memorable. You can also consider visualizing your content and translating it into a well-designed infographic.

6. Creating High-Quality Visuals

Now, the visual challenge is a story for itself. Quality visuals are the second most crucial success factor. It takes time and skills to create them. On the other hand, with visuals, the chances that they will get shared on social media are much higher. So, you can decide to create original images or use high-quality stock materials.

For stock photos, go to a website that offers excellent stock photography. For original photos, have your team ready with a camera. To optimize your images for social media, you can use tools like Canva or Pablo. Make sure that each image is sized for a specific social network. Even more, you should avoid stock photos that are overused, and design everything with your consistent brand logos, colors, and palettes.

7. Getting People to Share

If a social marketing manager finds a tactic that works and keeps using it over and over, they can get into a creative rut. However, the results start declining after a while, and you need to switch your tactics. Your content, even though valuable and relevant, could use a creative boost.

Social media is all about relationships. People share to bring entertaining, informative, and valuable content to their peers. Firstly, you can consider using different formats. Secondly, you can create more exciting content by using emotional appeal and telling great stories.

As a vibrant social media management tool with diverse features, eClincher can help you optimize your social media efforts. Do you need a social media inbox? To track, analyze, and optimize? Did you know you can effectively engage your audience from a single dashboard and leverage tools like automated-posting?  We have designed eClincher as a social media productivity platform with you in mind and with accelerated end-user engagement as the outcome.