As small business owners begin marketing their company on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and the like, it’s easy to go overboard when attempting to build your fan base and convert them into customers. Sure, social media platforms are powerful, they have hundreds of millions if not billions of potential customers congregating on them, and they’re excellent platforms to build your brand and find loyal customers.

It’s unfortunate but many companies still make big mistakes with their social media accounts. Since three quarters of the people online use social networking in one form or another, using these accounts wrong could have a negative impact on your business. To get the most out of social media sites, please avoid making the following mistakes.

1. Try to Develop a Presence on Every Social Media Platform

There’s only so much time in the day, so as a small business owner you have to use your time wisely. Instead of attempting to master every available social media platform, pick one to start out with and see if you can develop a presence on this site.

By approaching social media this way, you’re giving your company an opportunity to have a big impact on one social media platform. When you choose this approach, you aren’t going to spread yourself too thin, which means you’ll have a better chance of maximizing the opportunity in front of you.

On the other hand, if you go wide on all social media platforms, you may have enough time to develop a small following on each platform, but you really won’t have a big effect overall. This is counterproductive at best and a real waste of time at worst.

So try not to go overboard when tackling social media in the beginning. After you master one platform and develop a huge strategy, you can then think about focusing on another platform once the first is on autopilot.

2. Not Focusing on Quality Posts over Quantity

Some small business owners believe social media won’t have a positive effect unless they’re posting content all day long. Now if you can manage to deliver quality content at numerous intervals throughout the day, by all means continue to make your audience happy while delivering high-quality content that will grant you additional authority in your market.

On the other hand, if you’re just posting content to reach some kind of arbitrary daily quota, and you really aren’t focusing on sharing high-quality information, you’re going to end up doing your company more harm than good. Forget about trying to reach a specific number of posts every day, because if it’s garbage nobody’s going to read it anyway. In fact, you’ll turn your current fans away because nobody wants to have their newsfeeds filled with junk content. They’ll stop following you altogether and this strategy will be really counterproductive.

3. Ignoring Social Media Comments

If one of your fans or followers takes time out of his or her busy day to comment on one of your posts, you better give this person a response. By interacting with your audience, you’re showing them that you really care, plus this interaction will make your social media fans happy and they’ll gladly do business with you.

Or, you can avoid and ignore your social media comments. Guess what? Your fans are going to feel ignored, cheated, and unloved. By ignoring them, you’ll show that you really don’t care about them at all, and they’ll eventually forget about you and no longer pay attention to your updates.

According to www.baristaunderground.com, if you ignore social media comments, be prepared to lose some of your loyal followers.

Conclusion

Avoid these social media mistakes at all costs to get the best results from these platforms for your small business.