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December 9, 2024
Social media marketing is constantly changing because everything about it is changing: Online culture, users’ age, and of course, the platforms’ algorithms. Because of that, we, as online social promotors and experts, must always learn and adapt to new norms. However, we are noticing a lot of online social promotors that are “stuck” with the same old routines, believing they will always work the same they did before, not realizing that times have changed. We have gathered a list of six myths in social promotions that you need to forget.
Many business owners know that they need to have a presence on Instagram. However, some of them believe that the purpose of having that presence is to bring new business. The problem is social management doesn’t work that way: Online presence is indeed required, but the chances of reaching new crowds and getting new customers could be higher.
So why do we need an online presence? To strengthen our brand in the minds of people that already know your brand. It is like a commercial that tells you things you already know but creates a certain image in its client base’s minds. Another way to present this claim is to say that online presence is vital to show our clients that we are serious enough to have a social presence.
Furthermore, some people spend a lot of time on Instagram, and for them, the easiest way to get in touch with your brand is on Instagram’s DM. For these potential clients, Instagram is a way to be more approachable.
Many social promotors use this grey hat tactic on social media: When they post something, they ask their friends to quickly like and comment on that post to generate more traffic. They know that likes-brings-likes, so what difference does it make? However, that is just another myth in social media: the algorithm knows that if all likes and comments come from the same cluster of profiles, these likes and comments are probably bogus. In a way, it does more harm than good by making the algorithm mistake these likes for fake profiles or bots.
"Social Media Is Free Marketing"
Many businesses feel that social media is just a free way to market themselves. There is, of course, some truth in that: If you are savvy in generating content online, you can definitely use that free stage that Instagram provides at no cost. However, if you are not a social media wiz and you are just posting uncalculated content to your business’s social platforms, it won’t do any good. You need to understand that social media is much more “Media” than “Social”: If you upload unengaging content, it won’t get any traffic. So if you want to benefit from social media, make sure you use professional content creators to help you generate content.
This is one of the biggest myths in social media. When social media management evolved from a hobby to a tradecraft, this so-called “pro tip” was considered one of the foundations of professional social media management. It was widely known that Sunday or Monday afternoons were peak hours, and it was best to post during these hours. However, the algorithm has undergone many changes in the last ten years. One of them is that our social feed is no longer chronological-based, so it doesn’t really matter what hours we post. Furthermore, we spend so much time on social media, so if a particular post is relevant to us, we’ll see it anyway.
However, engagement is more crucial in the first couple of hours of posting. In that sense, there is still some significance to the time of posting.
A common practice of social managers is creating highly-invested and beautifully-designed social post graphics in Canva or photoshop that illustrate ideas and messages via texts. Unfortunately, it is just one of the myths in social media. Though these posts give added value to users who read them, they provide very little value to those who post them: Instagram’s algorithm analyzes all images and prefers original visuals that have yet to be used before on the platform. It is better to post an authentic picture of a fire hydrant than a ten-image carousel that offers to save people money. If you want to increase your reach, it is all about that original content.
Canva is one of the best graphic design you can use for social media content. Click here to get started.
One of the myths in social media, is preferring and using the practice is quantity over quality; the more, the merrier, or however you want to call it. Posts as much as we can, and something will catch up. However, when we post content that doesn’t get engagement, the algorithm learns that our profile could be more exciting and gives us less reach. so instead of putting the emphasis on quantity, go for the quality. Post less and achieve more.
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