Social marketing tip #3: 6 widely accepted myths about social media marketing

bysmartketeer

6.8K followers

Updated 6 years ago

This time I'm going to share with you ...

6 widely accepted myths about social media marketing

1. You need a separate social media strategy

Social media marketing is often described as a separate or “independent” marketing activity and that’s a huge mistake. Obviously, it can be defined as a separate component, but must be an “organic” part of your overall marketing mix. In fact, all the other – interrelated – strategies such as content marketing, SEO, etc are drawing a considerable amount of extra power from your social media efforts. In other words, social media marketing is not a stand-alone marketing tool, but a complementary marketing method used to amplify the results gained from other marketing channels.

2. You need an entire army of fans or followers to be successful

Obviously, it’s important to gain followers. As many as you can. More fans and followers means you are gaining access to their fans and followers. This is the real beauty of social media and if you have an impressive, continuously growing number of followers, your social media marketing works. On the other hand, follower count is not an engagement-oriented metric. Follower count is a vanity metric. It’s just quantity, nothing else. So yes, it’s important to increase those numbers, but what really matters is quality. One hundred active, well-targeted fans can – and will – bring you more business, than 10,000 inactive followers.

3. Social media is only for young people

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Social media – just like the internet – is for everybody. According to Hubspot 40% of Facebook's active users are over age 35, and 52% of 55-64 year old internet users have joined at least one social network.

4. The automated scheduling tools will do all the work for you

No, they won’t! I accept, they can help you a lot in your daily efforts, especially when you are away from your office. But they cannot “replace” you. Social media and social media marketing is about personal connections and human interactions. You can – and you should – use automated scheduling to increase your efficiency and to maintain a given frequency, but don’t forget: it’s called “social” media for a reason. Your presence is needed and you need to be social …

5. You need to be present on every major social platform

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Wasting considerable resources and a huge amount of time for being present on too many social networks, is – sadly – one of the most common “rookie” mistakes. As I have already said, you should focus on two or three social platforms, those which are optimal for your target audience. Period.

6. You can use the very same content piece for every social platform

Honestly? It’s absurd and nonsensical. Have you ever tried to re-publish your latest tweet on Pinterest? I guess you haven’t. Facebook is a B2C environment and LinkedIn is a professional B2B platform. The perfect length of a Facebook Post is around 40 characters and the ideal tweet length is about 100 characters. The point: each social media channel is different and you’ll need different, platform-specific, custom-tailored content pieces for each social network.