What You Need to Know Why Your Social Media Content Marketing Isn’t Working

What's the main objective, and how does it fit into your social media strategy? Every business should have well-defined goals and objectives for the short, medium, and long term.

Your business goals play a vital role in shaping your social strategy development and planning. They also influence the way you create your social content marketing strategy.

Make sure you establish precise business goals. Clearly define your vision and mission. Your business objectives should be so transparent and succinct that everyone in your organization understands what they entail.

This clarity will guide how you align them with your social media goals.

2. Lack of Clear and Specific Goals for Social Media Content Marketing 

The first question to ask is whether your social media goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-specific (SMART). If your social media goals are not aligned with your business objectives, it could lead to issues in your content strategy.

So, start by clearly defining your social media goals. Do you aim to enhance conversions, raise brand awareness, manage brand reputation, or generate leads? Remember that, regardless of your goals, they should contribute to your overall business objectives. Next, pinpoint the metrics for each goal. Every goal has specific metrics for measurement. 

Here's a brief breakdown using the SMART methodology. For instance, you can set a social media content marketing goal like "increasing brand awareness within the next 6 months," which is applicable to any service business.

• Specific: Increase brand awareness of your Instagram business profile within a 10-mile radius of your workshop.
• Measurable: Grow your Instagram community within a 10-mile radius of your workshop by 13%. 
• Is this achievable? This depends on resource allocation here. But, yes, this is achievable.
• Realistic: Yes, using various organic growth strategies or augmenting organic Instagram content with advertising
• Time-sensitive: Grow your Instagram community within a 10-mile radius of your workshop by 13% in 6-months.

With your goals in place, assign relevant KPIs. Here are a few.

• Increasing brand awareness: traffic, impressions, reach.
• Lead generation and sales: email sign-ups, sales revenue, conversion rate
• Growing online community: followers, engagement rate, mentions
• Boosting web traffic: email sign-ups, conversations, clicks.

Without this critical element, your social media content strategy will fall off. So, if you are struggling, ask yourself, have I set my social media goals?

3. Insufficient Budget Allocation

Let's be practical. Implementing your social media content strategy will demand financial resources. With numerous activities happening concurrently, you might need to consider bringing in content managers or social media experts to handle specific aspects of your business.

Here are a few things that require resource allocation.

• Content creation cost
• Labor costs
• Paid advertising and campaigns.
• Marketing software, tools, and subscriptions
• Miscellaneous expenses

These activities and tools come with expenses, and business owners frequently underestimate the amount of resources they should allocate to them.

Additionally, establishing a social media budget serves as a way to prevent unnecessary spending. If you're still facing challenges with your social content marketing strategy, it might be a good idea to review your budget and assess how you've allocated resources in the past

4. Insufficient Industry Research

Creating a social media content strategy without conducting research is counterproductive. Although it's tempting to dive into action and start implementing your ideas, you'll be missing out on valuable insights that can enhance your decision-making.

Here are some important reasons to conduct a competitive analysis:

• Identify emerging trends.
• Minimize your investment risk.
• Evaluate the feasibility of your business idea and strategy.
• Gather valuable industry insights.
• Comprehend the regulatory landscape.
• Uncover your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.
• Identify readily available opportunities.

You'll be missing out on all these benefits and more if you neglect research. Therefore, if you observe that your social media content strategy is underperforming, it could be because you didn't carry out comprehensive research in your industry.

5. Poor Understanding Of Your Competitors

Partially, comprehending your competitors also involves research. Yet, this is more targeted than general industry research. It's crucial to grasp what your competitors are doing before shaping your social media content strategy.

The objective is not to imitate or plagiarize their ideas. Instead, you aim to analyze what's effective for them, which can help you refine your own strategies. 

For example, you'd want to examine their Instagram posts, engagement rates, and the accounts they're tagging. By comparing your approach to theirs, you can make necessary adjustments.

There are further compelling reasons to examine your competitors, including:

• Gaining insights into online relationship management.
• Understanding the frequency of promoted posts.
• Obtaining an idea of the budget required for successful campaigns.
• Discerning which content types to prioritize.

Once more, neglecting a comprehensive competitive analysis could lead to missed opportunities and challenges for your business.

6. Lack of Profile Optimization

Social Media Profile Optimization (SMO) is the process of utilizing and enhancing your social media activities to maximize their advantages and achieve your objectives. It involves various aspects, such as crafting a user-friendly profile, showcasing your social proof, and ensuring consistency across your social profiles.

Your social profile serves as the face of your business, and it significantly influences people's perceptions. Make sure your bio is informative and effectively conveys the advantages of your services. Potential customers seek to understand how your service can benefit them. 

Additionally, emphasize your brand identity and utilize appropriate colors. Remember, first impressions are crucial, so make them count.

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind when optimizing your social profiles.

Profile Photo: Utilize a high-quality image that pertains to your business.

Your Bio: Craft a bio that addresses the two key questions every customer has in mind: Why should I trust you? What's in it for me? Emphasize your social proof and articulate the benefits of your service.

Privacy Settings: Ensure your profile is visible, and your content is shareable.

Website Link: Provide a link to your website so that customers have a destination for additional information.

As straightforward as profile optimization may seem, it plays a critical role in the success of your social media content strategy. When people can't connect your content with your social profile, it distorts their perception of your business, and there's no quicker way to deter potential customers.

7. Unclear Audience Personas

Your audience persona is a semi-fictional portrayal of your ideal user. Crafting a user persona enhances your ability to reach and connect with your audience effectively. It also enhances the clarity of your messaging and provides valuable insights into your customers' behaviors.

User personas enable you to comprehend the needs, challenges, goals, and preferences of your audience. This knowledge, in turn, informs your content strategy.

Trying to devise a social content strategy without this understanding is akin to taking a haphazard approach, which often results in inefficiency and waste.

Here's a basic guide to crafting a user persona.

• Gather data about your current customers.
• Identify customer pain points and requirements.
• Design what you envision as an ideal user experience.
• Add a personal touch to your persona by assigning a name and photo, and include demographic and psychographic details.
• Narrate the story of your users to deepen your understanding.
• Structure the data and fine-tune it as needed.

Developing an audience persona will guide your content creation and distribution.

Misalignment can result in reaching the wrong audience. Therefore, if your content marketing strategy starts to lose its way, this might be an underlying factor.

8. Brand Guidelines for Social Media Content Marketing

Brand guidelines encompass the standards, rules, and directions that shape the visual and verbal aspects of your business's communication with its audience. These guidelines aid in building a trustworthy, identifiable, and uniform brand identity across your social media content.

Setting up concise guidelines ensures that your content remains in harmony with your aims and objectives. It also guarantees consistency, regardless of the person responsible for content creation or publication. 

Your brand guidelines should offer clarity regarding your writing style, creative elements, and design specifications.

When it comes to writing, you can anticipate the following:

• Grammar standards and styles.
• Length and character requirements.
• Preferred tone, voice, and style.
• Variations in sentence structure.

As for creative assets and designs, you should include the following:

• Brand colors, their symbolism, and applications.
• Interface and font combinations.
• Image style, encompassing photos, illustrations, GIFs, and animations.
• Shapes that symbolize your brand.

Upgrade Your Social Media Content Marketing Strategy

Social media undeniably plays a crucial role in elevating your business. Consequently, a malfunctioning social media content marketing approach can lead to wasted time and missed opportunities. Interestingly, when service-based businesses confront this issue, they often focus on the content itself and other visible aspects.

However, more often than not, the root of the problem lies in the foundation. If your social media content strategy is faltering, it's time to seek the assistance of seasoned experts. Apply to work with us now. We will assess your content strategy and reconstruct it from the ground up.