How You Can Solve the Most Common Social Media Marketing Challenges
In recent years, social media has become a key driver of conversions and sales for many businesses. Marketers who realized the importance of social media early on were able to capitalize on the opportunity in front of them. Others realized what was going on, but only when the prime time had passed.
As time passes, there is bound to be some change in the way these social media platforms behave. Organic reach is plummeting on key platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Below are nine of the most common social media marketing challenges and strategies to solve them:
1. Lack of Resources
Many organizations simply lack the advertising budget and workforce to compete with a traditional competitor on social media.
One of the biggest social media marketing challenges that a marketer can face is that the business in question isn’t paying enough attention to social media.
Businesses that still haven’t come to terms with the impact that social media can have are not going to invest in it, and that’s to their own detriment.
Solution:
One of the first things that you should try to do is to convince your management that social media marketing, when done right, can yield significant results. Base your argument on facts and figures, and you might be able to change their minds.
The next best option you have is to try and achieve a balance between quality and quantity. Since you don’t have the resources, the only thing you can do is use your noggin and develop an effective strategy towards your social media marketing efforts.
2. Difficulty in Increasing Followers
The number of followers your business has is a vanity metric, meaning that as a marketer, you should not worry about it too much.
Having said that, you can’t completely disregard the number of followers you have. What you should be paying more attention to is the level of engagement you’re getting from your followers.
Solution:
There are a few smart things that you can do to increase your followers.
The first thing that you should do is to try and be a part of the community. Being an active member of the community, you’d be able to attract attention to your business.
Engaging with influencers from your niche will also help you increase your visibility and potentially increase your followers.
Last but not least, make sure to create and share relevant and meaningful content that provides significant value to your audience.
3. Lack of (or No) Formal Strategy
A challenge that most social media marketers face is having a lack of formal strategy for social media. Some organizations don’t even bother coming up with a proper strategy; the results, as you would expect, are sporadic and aren’t too encouraging.
If you don’t have a proper strategy and tactics for social media, you’re not going to be able to measure the impact that your marketing campaigns have on your bottom line.
Solution:
Below are a few steps that you can take to develop a strategy for social media.
Clearly outline the goals you hope to achieve through your social media marketing efforts.
Gain insights about your audience. If you know your audience, you’ll be in a much better position to market your business.
Identify your competition and make adequate countermeasures.
Determine which marketing efforts are working, focus on them, and make an effort to refine them.
4. Declining Organic Reach
Organic reach on many social media platforms has been declining in the past few years. Because of this, businesses aren’t able to get the levels of engagement they once did.
A lack of organic reach is forcing marketers to use more and more of their advertising budget.
Solution:
Make high-quality content. Without high-quality content, your social media post is going to get lost anyways. Also, you need to make sure that you’re taking care of your quality as well.
By ensuring that your post is of the utmost quality, people will be more inclined to share your content with other people.
In the early days of a social media platform, the organic reach is enormous. TikTok, for example, provides exceptional organic reach. If you could use new platforms like TikTok to boost your organic reach, you’d be able to reach your target audience and not have to pay any advertising money to do so.
5. Staying Relevant
Businesses that don’t stay relevant are cast aside by their audience.
As time passes by, your business is going to evolve, and your target audience is going to change as well.
You, the social media marketer, are going to have to make an effort to make sure that the business stays relevant. If your business isn’t relevant, you’re not going to be able to maintain the current level of engagement and conversions.
Solution:
The best way to make sure that your content and overall business is relevant is to ask your audience what they think about the organization. In most cases, your audience will be able to highlight the good, bad, and ugly related to your business.
Keep up with tech and the latest trends. If your content looks and feels like it was made five years ago, it’s not going to have a positive impact on your business.
6. Showing Your Content to a Broader Audience
A problem that many digital marketers face is that their content is circulating in front of only a fraction of their audience. One of the biggest reasons could be that the content isn’t engaging enough.
If you spend hours preparing a piece of content and it ends up performing poorly, your effort is going to be utterly wasted. Be smart and pay attention to your audience and what they want to see in a piece of content from your business.
With so much content being posted simultaneously on multiple platforms, your post is going to need something special if you want people to pay any kind of attention to your post.
Solution:
Since organic reach is steadily declining on most platforms, there are a few things you can do to show your content to a broader audience.
If you have the advertising budget, you should advertise your content to relevant audiences.
If you want to avoid using your advertising budget, what you could do is make people share your content within their circle. By providing a high level of value to your audience, you are increasing the chances of having your post shared.
Keep the audience first, provide relevant and meaningful content, and you’ll be well on your way to having your social media posts shared by your audience.
7. Maintaining Content Quality
Content quality is something that needs to improve or at least stay consistent over time. If the quality of your posts starts to decline, your audience will notice immediately and react accordingly.
To save yourself and your brand from nasty comments online, make an effort to maintain quality.
Solution:
If you want to maintain your content quality, there are a few things that you could do.
The first would be to remind yourself of your business’s core values. Remembering your core values will help you come up with content that your audience would appreciate.
8. Time Management
A problem that most marketers, and especially new marketers face, is that there is so much to do on social media. The hard part about marketing on social media is that it is so engaging that time flies. An effective social media marketer going to need a serious amount of discipline to stay on track.
Solution:
The best way to utilize your time is to prepare a schedule and stick to it.
Divide up your tasks. If you have a team with you, allocate tasks in a way that gets the job done as soon as possible.
9. Keeping Up with the Latest Trends
The trends on social media used to change by the day. Now some trends only last for a couple of hours. This creates another of the biggest social media marketing challenges.
If you want your business to stay trendy and in front of your audience, you will need to cash in on the latest trends. You’re never going to know what trend is going to go big, so your best bet is to try and time them all.
Solution:
Prepare a planner for your regular social media posts.
Schedule your regular posts in advance.
If you notice an upcoming trend, you won’t have to worry about your regular posts.
You’ll be in much better control and be able to whip up relevant and engaging content that would relate to the trend.
Learning from smart people and industry leaders will also help you grow.
Conclusion: Overcoming Social Media Marketing Challenges
As these social media platforms evolve, there is bound to be some change in the way marketers use these platforms to generate leads and sales.
Nevertheless, marketers can’t ignore the importance of social media. As an increasing number of people are extending their stay on social media platforms, it is your job as the marketer to go where your audience is.
By adopting the techniques in this article, you’ll be able to use social media more effectively.
Hamzah Adil is a digital marketer who is passionate about entrepreneurship and business. He is currently associated with a startup that has developed a live chat app called SwiftChat.
