Even after all of these years, many companies are still not getting the results from their social media efforts that they were hoping for when they began using social media, and a lot of the disappointment can be attributed to using this channel improperly.

Using social media for marketing can be a bit of a tightrope walk. On one hand, you have the potential for a lot of engagement and the ability to build brand loyalty with your audience.

On the other side you run the risk of alienating your audience if you don’t use the social media channel properly. Staying away from this risky side of the tightrope really depends on how well you’ve identified your audience and what their expectations of your company are.

This article will review the uniqueness of the social media channel, the common errors that companies make when using it, and what you can do to engage your audience with your company.

The Importance of Social Media for Companies

In today's market, social media has emerged as a fundamental channel for companies to increase visibility, engage with their audience, and drive sales. Social media has been known to make or break brands depending on how companies use this marketing channel.

Consider this: according to SproutSocial, 68% of consumers follow brands on social media to stay informed about products and services.

This just exemplifies that customers are on social media platforms, which means that companies need to ensure that their marketing strategies include this channel.

Social media provides a great opportunity to reach your customers where they are and, unlike any other digital channel, truly engage with them in conversations that they actually want to have.

Social Media's Role in Brand Visibility and Engagement

Let’s talk about your company’s brand visibility. If no one knows that you exist, you’ll never have any customers, no matter how good your product or service may be. Most customers do business with companies that they are somewhat familiar with.

“No one ever got fired for buying Salesforce” is a common phrase that exemplifies how a well-known brand is almost always the most trusted brand, regardless of whether that trust is earned.

There are plenty of metrics and studies available that identify the number of people that are using social media, at or over 4 billion. This represents one of the largest collections of people online. The ability to find your audience and introduce or reinforce your brand to them is extremely strong on social media platforms.

Gaining visibility is just the first step. The more important step is getting engagement from the people who are most likely to become customers. Brand engagement is about more than just increasing your brand's visibility. It is all about starting or building a relationship with your customers and potential customers.

Brand engagement can build a bridge between your company and your customers by creating an emotional connection with your customers. Brand engagement is a pull strategy as it attempts to pull your customers or potential customers closer to your brand.

Social media engagement is a metric of how people are interacting with your social media profiles. Engagement is a broad term that can mean likes, comments, direct messages, shares, retweets, clicks, and more. Essentially, engagement is exactly what you would imagine, it’s an audience member that takes action on some marketing action you’ve done on your social media account.

If you create content on, let’s say, your LinkedIn account, but no one has taken any action on that post, then you’ve had no engagement.

Why is social media so important? In addition to the obvious answer of increasing the number of potential customers you’re reaching, engagement is also important for social media platforms' algorithms.

For example, Facebook uses what they call “meaningful interactions” to signal that your social media posts should be prioritized and shown to more people. Basically, the more engagement your social media activities produce, the more people will see them.

Social Media’s Impact on Brand Success

With upwards of 4 billion people on social media, it has quickly become apparent that the customer is now in control. They can voice their thoughts and opinions on your products, your services, and your brand as a whole.

This can have an amazing impact, for good or bad, which makes using the social media channel correctly extremely important. As you draft your social media marketing strategy, here are some things to keep in mind for how to use this channel to receive a good impact.

Case Study: Nike

Nike has masterfully utilized social media platforms to tell inspiring stories that resonate deeply with their audience. Through campaigns like "Just Do It," Nike shares powerful narratives of perseverance, dedication, and success in sports, effectively connecting with a broad spectrum of consumers.

Nike’s storytelling emphasizes the brand's core message of inspiration and motivation by highlighting renowned athletes and everyday people achieving their best.

Using hashtags, such as #JustDoIt, encourages users to share their stories, fostering a sense of community and engagement.

Nike's approach enhances brand visibility and deepens consumer loyalty by aligning with their audience's values and aspirations.

Case Study: Lego

Lego has turned to social media to showcase its building blocks' endless possibilities, engaging children and adults worldwide.

Lego shares user-generated content through platforms like Instagram and Facebook, highlighting incredible creations from its community. This strategy not only celebrates its users' creativity but inspires others to explore their imaginative potential with Lego products.

Additionally, Lego uses social media for storytelling, often tying in with movie releases or special events to create themed content that captivates its audience.

Lego has built a vibrant and supportive online community by fostering a space where fans can share their creations and stories, strengthening its brand appeal and customer loyalty.

The Shift in Consumer Behavior and Expectations

Social media has significantly shifted consumer behavior and expectations, and in today’s marketing, knowing who makes up your target market is no longer enough. A key skill to have when it comes to social media marketing success is a clear understanding of your customers' behavior.

Social media has changed the way that customers and potential customers gather information about products and services. By using social media platforms, customers can research prices, read reviews, and gain valuable insights into a product's features and benefits.

These activities move the customer through their buying decision without ever talking to anyone at your company.

However, when customers do want to talk to you, your company has a more direct channel of communication with your customers than you’ve ever had in the past.

There is another side to this communication, though. Social media offers you an opportunity to be more proactive in communicating with your potential and current customers.

By using social media platforms to be more proactive you can, as we’ve mentioned before, be proactive in positioning yourself as an industry expert, demonstrating your brand’s authentic personality, and in general be a good steward of customer’s trust.

Another SproutSocial report indicated that 68% of consumers follow a brand “To stay informed about new products or services.”

This report went on to identify what consumers don’t see enough of, from brands:

Authentic, non-promotional content
Transparency about business practices and values
Information about how products are made or sourced
Educational content related to the brand’s industry
Customer testimonials

Your customers are looking for authenticity, transparency, and personalization from your brand.

Common Mistakes That Alienate Companies from Their Audience

Survey after survey has found that the biggest problem companies run into when it comes to social media marketing is not taking the time to develop a social media marketing strategy.

A lack of social media marketing strategy will leave your company with random posts with no continuity and inconsistent timing, which will turn off your audience.

Ignoring Data

Social media platforms give you the ability to gather data in near-real-time. This is one of the greatest advantages of social media marketing. However, it’s also one of the least-used features of the channel.

Just like any business goal and strategy, it’s best to base social media marketing goals and strategy on data. Picking a goal for, let’s say, followers without gathering data is simply setting your marketing effort up for failure.

Some of the more important data points that you should be following on a regular basis are:

Demographic information of the people that are following your social media profile.
Time of day activity will give you insights as to when your audience is most active.
Are your audience members engaging more with videos or images in your posts?
What subject is your audience engaging with the most?
Engagement metrics like clicks, comments, and shares
Reach or how many people are actually seeing your post
Follower trends. This is more important than just a follower count.

Undefined Target Audience

If you don’t identify the people that you want to talk to with your social media posts, you won’t resonate with anyone because your posts are going to be too generic to provide any value.

The first step in your social media marketing strategy is to identify exactly the audience segments that you want to talk with on your social media platforms. Yes, there will be more than one audience segment, and you will have to create content that will resonate with all of them.

By targeting your audience you’ll be better prepared to do all of the things in the couple paragraphs above when we talked about what consumers want to see out of brands. Things like authenticity, relevancy, building trust, and providing educational value all come down to speaking to a specific audience segment.

Click-Bait

Clickbait will provide you with a quick win, but it will be a long-term loss.

Clickbait refers to web content that uses sensationalized, misleading, or exaggerated headlines or thumbnails to entice users to click on a social media post.

The primary goal of clickbait is to generate online traffic and increase views, often at the expense of quality or accuracy. These headlines frequently promise more than the content delivers, using phrases like "You won't believe what happened next" or "This one weird trick...".

While clickbait can effectively draw in users, it can also lead to frustration and distrust when the content doesn't fulfill the expectations set by the headline, potentially harming the credibility of the publisher or brand.

Failing to Engage

Engagement is the name of the social media game, and it is a two-way street. All too often, companies do not engage with their audience on social media.

Rather than sitting back and waiting for your audience to engage with you, engage with them. Ask questions on a regular basis. Ask them what they like, don’t like, and what struggles they have with products (make sure this is relevant to your brand).

Social media can be a wealth of information if you use it properly. Think of social media as your channel for market research. Who knows, engaging your audience could bring about your next big product or service.

Inauthentic Content

It’s all too easy for a business to get caught in the trap of inauthentic content on its social media profiles. We’ve all seen the responses to negative reviews that are word-for-word the same.

Or the continual product promotion, which is dripping with “marketing speak” so bad it’s impossible to think that any human would actually speak that way. It’s a huge turn-off to your audience; they will unfollow you and never look at your posts again.

Some of the more common forms of inauthentic content are:

Stock Images and Misrepresentation: Some companies have been caught using stock photos to represent their customers who weren't actually customers. This can lead to accusations of inauthenticity when the public realizes that the imagery doesn't match the brand's real-world engagement or demographic.
Falsified Claims of Sustainability: Recently, several companies have faced criticism for "greenwashing" on social media—making claims about being environmentally friendly or sustainable without substantive actions to back those claims. This disconnect between social media portrayal and actual practices can lead to public distrust and accusations of inauthentic marketing.
Fabricated Stories: There have been instances where companies or their marketing agencies fabricated stories or testimonials to create viral content. When these fabrications come to light, the backlash can be severe, leading to a loss of trust that takes significant effort to rebuild.

Over-promotion without value addition

While social media is a vital marketing tool, companies focusing too much on self-promotion without adding value to their audience's experience can quickly become unwelcome in their followers' feeds.

Your customers are engaging with your social posts looking for a balance of information and educational content. Companies that constantly promote only products and services without offering helpful information, engaging stories or entertainment are perceived as spammy.

The key to avoiding this pitfall is to adopt the 80/20 rule: 80% of content should inform, educate, or entertain, while only 20% should directly promote the brand.

Inconsistency in posting and brand messaging

Consistency is critical in social media marketing. Erratic posting schedules and inconsistent brand messaging can confuse and disengage your audience.

When followers cannot rely on a brand to provide regular, coherent content, they are less likely to stay engaged. Message inconsistency can also dilute your brand's identity, making it hard for the audience to understand what it stands for.

Establishing a consistent tone of voice, visual style, and posting schedule helps build a recognizable and reliable brand presence on social media. Click here for a free copy of our social media schedule spreadsheet.

Neglecting the power of visual content

Neglecting the power of imagery and graphics in social media is a significant oversight. Visuals (e.g., photos, videos, and infographics) can capture attention, convey your message quickly, and provoke emotional responses more effectively than text alone.

Companies that fail to leverage high-quality, compelling visual content miss out on a critical opportunity to engage and captivate their audience. Investing in visual storytelling and creative visuals can dramatically enhance a brand's appeal and engagement levels on social media.

Strategies to Endear Your Audience

Using social media for your marketing in a way that really engages your audience and builds loyalty requires a strategic plan.

The following strategies have been effective for many companies in building meaningful engagement between companies and their audience.

Teaches Me Something New

Offering valuable insights, tips, or knowledge without overtly promoting your products or services is one of the most popular ways to tell or teach people something new about your company, product, or service.

For example, a brand specializing in skincare could create content that delves into the science behind skin health, such as explaining how different vitamins affect the skin or tips for a better nighttime skincare routine.

By focusing on providing genuinely helpful information, the brand educates its audience on topics that interest them without directly selling a product.

This approach positions the brand as a trusted resource in its niche and encourages engagement by sparking curiosity and offering real solutions to common concerns.

Makes Me Laugh

Because the digital landscape has become saturated with content, companies that employ humor in their social media strategies find a distinctive way to cut through the noise and capture their audience's attention.

If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you can’t help but find examples of companies trying to make you laugh, from State Farm using Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent on the word neighbor to Buffalo Wild Wing’s talking buffalo. In fact, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity announced that it would add a new humor category to its 2024 awards.

A recent survey highlighting consumer attraction to companies that make them laugh underscores humor's powerful role in engagement and relationship building. By tapping into the universal language of laughter, companies can create memorable, shareable content that resonates on a personal level with their followers.

Create Something That Inspires Me

Companies that leverage social media to inspire their audience to tap into a powerful emotional connection that transcends the transactional nature of consumer relationships.

Inspirational content can elevate a brand from a mere provider of goods or services to a source of motivation and positivity in people's lives. By focusing on uplifting messages, success stories, and motivational insights, companies can forge more profound, meaningful connections with their audience.

One effective way for companies to inspire their audience is by sharing stories of overcoming challenges or achieving significant milestones. This could include highlighting customer success stories, showcasing how the brand's products or services have transformed lives, or sharing the brand's own journey, emphasizing the hurdles overcome on the path to success.

These narratives resonate on a personal level, encouraging followers to pursue their own goals and dreams. Such content showcases the brand's human side and builds a community of like-minded individuals who share a bond over common aspirations and values.

Conclusion

Throughout this exploration into the multifaceted role of social media, we've gone from the foundational importance of these platforms in modern marketing to the unique strategies that can make or break the relationship between a brand and its audience.

We’ve reviewed the perils of inauthenticity, the backlash against overt promotion, and the critical errors of ignoring audience feedback and underutilizing visual content.

These examples show the importance of authenticity, responsiveness, and creativity in social media strategies. We’ve also seen how humor and inspiration can be powerful tools in a brand's arsenal, enabling them to connect with their audience on a deeper emotional level.

In conclusion, the social media landscape offers great opportunities for companies to connect with their audience in meaningful ways. Whether through the power of laughter or the inspiration of motivational stories, the goal remains the same: to build a genuine connection with the audience.

This article has highlighted that the most successful social media companies are those that understand their audience deeply, engage with them authentically, and consistently deliver value beyond their products or services.

As we move forward, the companies that will thrive are those that view their social media platforms not just as marketing tools but as gateways to building lasting relationships based on trust, respect, and shared values.