Top 10 Challenges you may face with Social Media Marketing

Social media is a gold mine for brands who want to connect with their audiences and increase their leads, but it can also consume a lot of your time if you aren’t carefully prepared in your approach. Over 2.3 billion people are currently active on social media across the world. Here are 10 challenges that most brands face in their social media marketing efforts.

1. Authentic Connections – It’s incredibly important to find the niche that makes your brand real and important to your audience. Brands need to use social monitoring tools and marketing management tools to post regularly and respond to followers.

2. Defining Strategy - According to the Content Marketing Institute, the most effective marketers document their strategies, but the number of brands with a documented content marketing strategy is down by 3% compared to last year. Only 32% of brands report having a documented strategy for approaching their content, but planning is everything when it comes to providing real value on a frequent basis.

3. Defining Success – Part of a good strategy will include having specific ways you can measure success or failure for a given goal. With specific analytics and a set deadline, you will be able to adjust your strategies as you go for maximum impact with your audience.

4. Organic Search Results – The decreasing organic reach among popular social networks has a lot of marketers struggling to find ways to get themselves back on top in search results. Putting a bit of your budget towards promotional ads on social media is a good way to get your content in front of valid leads.

5. Constant Ideas for Content – Brands have to post regularly and they have to post value. A social media content calendar and marketing automation are very important tools to use in order to make the task possible. Your email manager and text message marketing software can be setup to send specific content when users behave in certain ways.

6. Increasing Valid Followers – You’ve worked hard to create good content and want to get that content out to the people who will benefit from seeing it. You should actively seek out qualified leads by working with social media influencers, by joining in on conversations about your brand and by creating brand advocates that will further increase your reach.

7. Increasing Sharing – You will want to create the kind of content that followers want to share with their own circles. Make sure you create mobile optimized content that includes visual aids for content that is engaging for your audience. Send out links to your content on multi-channels, including your contacts on your business texting service.

8. Creative Ruts – A common problem for brands is when they find a formula that works – and then keep using it over and over. Don’t become complacent and get stuck on one way of thinking just because it works well for you once or twice. Keep things fresh and continue to look for ways to think outside of the box.

9. Focusing on What Matters – Another problem that brands on social media often face, is falling into a rut of self-promotion. Posting about your company, products and services is easy, but it is boring and obnoxious for your followers. Surveys have reported that brand self-promotion is one of the fastest and surest ways to get unfollowed.

10. Branded Images – In order to create a consistent brand that is unquestionably recognizable, you will need to post with images and graphics that are consistent with your brand. Whether you are adding a logo, text or editing images in a specific way, you need to have a certain look and feel that will convey your brand and keep your entire marketing approach cohesive.

Guest Author Biography Sophorn Chhay Sophorn is a marketing professional at Trumpia, the most complete SMS software with mass sms messaging, smart targeting and automation. Jumpstart your business by grabbing your free copy of his powerful Mobile Marketing Success Kit. Watch Trumpia’s 5-Minute Demo on how to execute an effective mobile marketing strategy.