Don't be April Fooled by Social Media

April 1st is today which means the observance of one of my favorite unofficial holidays, “April Fools.” Year after year, people everywhere pranked or misled, being fooled into believing something that is not true. In light of this holiday of haughty misinformation, we are going to spend the coming weeks breaking down some of the most common misconceptions of social media, helping you to not be fooled!

Today, let’s start with three of the most common misconceptions we’ve heard from other social media managers in our industry.

1. Size Matters. In the social media world, we are always talking about likes and followers. In fact, much of our success is measured in these metrics. But at Revox Social, we geek out more when it comes to engagement rate. Engagement rate is when your posts are getting comments, likes and shares. You can have 5k followers who are not engaged with what you’re sharing and thus leading to a low engagement rate. Or, you can have 500 followers who are regularly interacting with what you’re sharing which leads to a higher engagement rate. Despite the number of followers you have, it’s important to dive deeper into the kinds of followers you have and what they want to see from a content perspective. 

Key takeaway: Stop focusing too much on likes and followers and spend more tie focusing on how to nurture and engage the audience you already have.

(Stay tuned for an upcoming post on how to engage more with your followers)

2. Post and Ghost. Please don’t do this. Business owners, marketing managers and social media practitioners are busy people, I get it. But the assumption that social media is just about posting things is, well...foolish! While it is a very common pain point among our clients, at Revox Social, we do our best to educate people on how to batch create and post content upfront so they can spend time being “social” on social media. We recommend that you’re spending at least 15-30 minutes each day interacting and engaging with your followers on social media. That means taking time to respond to comments and DMs while also liking and following new people. We call this aspect of social media “Community Engagement” and it is a major key to seeing any kind of success on social.

Key takeaway: Use a tool like a posting schedule and a tool like Sprout Social to schedule posts ahead of time so you can spend what little time you have interacting and engaging with your followers on social media.

(Stay tuned for an upcoming post on how to best create engaging content)

3. Be All the Places. Social media is always changing and it can be overwhelming to keep up. “FOMO” is a real thing and many of us think we need to be doing all the things in all the places but that is not necessarily true. Your business needs to be investing time and energy into the right place and platform. If that means you’re only doing Facebook, great! Or, maybe you’re putting all of your eggs in the Instagram basket (Easter pun intended), that’s okay too! Just because there are dozens of social media platforms does not mean you need to be on all of them. In fact, we at Revox Social recommend doing an audience audit before you jump into setting up your social profiles. This means you take the time to clearly identify who your target avatar is, his/her name, their interests and how they are using specific social media platforms. It just doesn’t make sense for you to be on TikTok if you’re targeting middle-aged mothers who are likely scrolling Facebook after their kids are in bed. If your audience is more diverse, take a look at your current social media insights to identify your audience and if you’re seeing a trend that justifies expanding to an additional social channel, then at least you know you are reaching your audience there. 

Key takeaway: you or your business’s capacity to manage multiple social media accounts effectively is what ultimately determines how many channels you should be using. Make sure you’re spending time and energy in the same places as your target audience.

(Stay tuned for an upcoming post about catering your content for the specific channels)

Let's wrap it up...

These are only three of many common misconceptions and misunderstandings around social media marketing. If you work in marketing or are running social media for your business, there are likely many more. I’d love to hear more examples in the comments. 

P.S. - if you're interested in setting up a social media strategy session in-person or over the phone, you can do that by clicking this link.