Saskatchewan small businesses placed well above the national average in volume and in 2018, the province ranked for the HIGHEST rate of small businesses across Canada. I firmly believe this is attributed to the provinces strong sense of community and love for supporting local.
If you are a small business owner or prospective small business, please, PLEASE do not go in blind when managing your social media accounts. I have created a list of the top 7 mistakes I routinely see:
Downplaying the value of good standing social media accounts and the benefits they have on a business — All businesses should have a social media presence in 2020. Let me repeat that for the people at the back—all businesses should have a social media presence in 2020. Social media has an overwhelming number of benefits for businesses from increasing brand awareness, humanizing your brand, staying top of mind for prospective clients, generating leads and boosting sales. In this day and age, it is unrealistic to deny that it is not in your business’s best interest to be on social media.
Underestimating the time associated with running a business’s social media accounts — Time commitment is a real problem with most Saskatchewan small businesses and is why they look to outsource their social media management. Too often, a business owner begins running their company’s social media accounts without having given a serious thought to the time commitment associated with management (after all, some businesses have a person—or department—solely dedicated to social media for the company) which leads to inconsistent posting and substandard upkeep.
Misunderstanding the difference between the platforms and how to strategically post on each — As a Saskatchewan-based social media manager, I have encountered my fair share of faux pas from: Linking all accounts so that the exact same content is going to all social media accounts without understanding the objective of each platform and missing the mark on what you are posting to a given platform.
Ignoring the creative element, and how smart businesses have a visual plan for their accounts — Social media has a creative element to it, and there is a reason why graphic designers are assisting businesses with the look and feel of their social media accounts. Generally, visuals are forgotten about until later down the road, when a company realizes that the images on their social media accounts are inconsistent, confusing for their audience and of poor quality.
Neglecting the copy — The writing that is associated with your social post will either win the hearts of your audience or deter them from reading future posts. It is imperative in managing social media accounts that a “voice” and “personality” are established from the get-go. Once these important elements are determined, it is crucial that all copy stays consistent with it to build brand authority and recognition.
Overlooking engagement — Social media is not all take and no give. The point of social media is to be social (hence the name). Which means that as a business page, you should be interacting with other pages, other accounts, replying to comments and actively responding to messages in your inboxes. Half of social media is planning, creating, scheduling and analyzing—and—the other half is engaging.
Flopping when it comes to social media strategy and what to post — In the beginning, you’re testing the waters and trying out different times to post, placement for the posts, creative and content. But after a while, you should have a grasp on what is working and what is not. If you are not checking in every so often to how your posts are performing, how will you know what is working and what is not? You should be gradually improving the performance of your social media accounts.
I hope understanding these mistakes adds perspective on the workload that is associated with social media management and the value in hiring a social media manager if the workload is not in your area of expertise.
If after reading this article, you realize that social media management is out-of-scope for your business, consider contacting me. I would LOVE to help your Sask small business score BIG in 2020 with social media. Call at 306.502.5778 or send me a line here.
