Top 3 Social Media Mistakes Author Are Making

by Justin Larson

I have been doing marketing for many business owners – authors among them – I have seen many common mistakes I want to bring to your attention. This is meant to teach you what to do and not to do in order to succeed in the social media world.

1. Boosting Their Posts

Yes – you read that correctly. Boosting your posts can be the wrong decision. There is no particular order to this list, but the #1 mistake I see entrepreneurs making with social media is that they think they are advertising their businesses by “boosting” their posts.

And why wouldn’t you – Facebook dangles the opportunity in front of you every chance they get. “Today’s post about your book is doing really well. Get in front of even more people by boosting your post!” For those who don’t know what boosting a post is, versus paying for a Facebook ad, here’s a simple explanation.

Facebook ads tend to have a bigger immediate impact and more directly achieve campaign goals, like lead captures, app installations, and sales.

Boosted posts can help you build your brand’s reach and fanbase – but they don’t generally lead to sales; ads are more likely to help you translate your brand’s presence into tangible outcomes.

Just to be clear, one is not better than the other. There is a time and a place to use each, like using different tools, depending on the job. You don’t always want to use a hammer – sometimes you will need a wrench.

2. Boring Content

Just like posting “Buy my book!” “Buy my book!” “Buy my book!” is repetitious and very annoying and comes across as spam, posting boring content is also useless!

What is boring content? Boring content is a post that has no purpose. For example, sales postes where people talk about themselves and why they are the best, or why there product/service is the best. Nobody cares until you care about them. Show your audience you care. Demonstrate you are the best by telling a success story that engages your readers.

Another example is when you re-post content from other sources. It’s great to share things you saw on another website that you thought was helpful or interesting, but if that’s the majority of what your page does, you may not get too far with your marketing.

A hint that your content might be boring is if no one is liking or sharing your posts.

6 tips for making an interesting post… 

1. Open with a question that will pull readers in.
2. Catch them off guard or make them think.
3. Tell a story.
4. Connect your topic to current events or trends.
5. Inject humor.
6. Add controversy.

3. Not Knowing or Tracking Who Their Audience Is

You could take a whole course on this topic alone, because a lot goes into identifying your specific audience. If you are just beginning to find your audience – or starting over because you’ve identified them – change things up by writing your content or marketing materials like you are speaking to one person. Create an avatar in your mind of who you your reader is and be very specific about things like gender, relationship status, age, parenting status, favorite sport/team, pets, home life, job, finances – in short, everything about that avatar’s life.

If you already have an audience, you can track them in one of many ways…

Google Analytics: All users remain anonymous while contributing to the collective data. Any demographic or socioeconomic data around those users comes from what Google knows about them.

Facebook Audience Insights: Similar to Google, all users remain anonymous while contributing to the collective data. Also, any demographic or socioeconomic data around those users comes from what Facebook knows about them. Facebook has more info than Google, though. Facebook knows everyone’s interests, groups they like, music, movies, and so much more.

Marketing automation: When users fill out a form on your website, each individual’s information should go directly into your marketing automation funnel. If your system is automated, the form software puts their name, social profiles, and possibly a face into your database. Now, you can track how this individual interacts with every aspect of your marketing, from first to last touch, which are primarily top-of-funnel activities. In addition, marketing automation platforms can go beyond your website to incorporate your emails and social media content, too. If yours isn’t doing this, it should be!

CRM: This software typically is connected to the sales team. It also is used to track an individual prospect through the sales process, but it typically focuses on activity in the middle and bottom of the sales funnel. You can connect your marketing automation tools to the most popular CRMs, including Salesforce, hubspot, and insightly. Integrating the two enables sales and marketing teams to better communicate. This is important even if you are both your own sales and marketing teams! Now you can see all the data available to help complete a sale. This is also a great way to determine which leads are good (and why).

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Justin Larson is a social media marketing professional. As a child, he was raised by many entrepreneurs. His grandparents on his dad’s side owned a woodworking business that is now owned by his aunt and uncle. His grandpa on his mom’s side owned a construction company and his maternal grandma owned a hair salon. He helped his parents in their woodworking machinery and lumber business, doing computer work and posting products online. He even helped create their first business website. It wasn’t perfect, but he knew from that moment on this was what he wanted to spend his life doing. Now he works with authors and small business owners who want to grow their businesses. Although social media is free to use, it can help explode business growth if used properly. Visit GreenForestMarketing.com to learn more.