Searching the internet for the most common myths for social media marketing there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about social media. Even when social media became more popular in the early 2000s, some people are still unsure just the impact and what social media even represents in their everyday lives.
For me, social media is about education, connection, communication, and using creativity to create content and put your own individual stamp on this fast and vast space of the internet. Hopefully, this gives a little more clarity on social media marketing and how it can truly impact the world of business and individuals.
Myth 1) Social Media Does Not Generate Any Revenue.
A Lot of people like to assume that all social media is good for posting cute pictures and sharing funny videos. However, social media is a powerful tool to help companies generate revenue and reach their bottom line. Social media offers paid advertising, brand awareness, reach, and unique engagement opportunities that no other marketing methods can really deliver to potential customers.
Social media platforms offer many ways to market and get your products in front of your target audience in the form of video ads, on-platform shops, forums, and content that relates to their pain points.
Myth 2) Social Media isn’t Relevant to my Business
Whether you’re a billion-dollar corporation or a small mom-and-pop shop every business can benefit from having a social media presence. One of the key functions of social media is putting your brand in front of potential customers. Everyone that owns a phone has a social media account and it is just another person you can get engaged with your business.
Too many times I’ve had small businesses tell me that they have no use for social media and that it is not relevant to their business. The way I see it is that social media marketing is one of the new ways marketing has evolved over the years. In this new era of digital media, it is important for businesses to adapt to changing business trends.
Myth 3) Social Media is too time-consuming
Social media isn’t an easy job; it requires research, understanding audience demographics needs, and planning. Ultimately that’s the whole premise of a social media manager and marketing team. As all good things take time the same goes with social media. Results can take time to reflect from work but the rewards of building a loyal customer base, that is centered on value and quality are worth it.
Social media is worth the investment for companies looking for a long-term strong online presence. This will give customers the opportunity to connect with brands and customer service when needed. Customers can get responses and information for more information or need to know where their shipment is.
Myth 4) Social Media is only for Promoting Products
Funny enough, social media is a lot about marketing but can also serve for social listening, responding to customer service inquiries, representing brand values, social monitoring, and connecting with individuals.
In fact, it is estimated as stated by “The Social Media Today, brands are encouraged to use social media for 20% promotions and 80% to creating valuable content”.
Social listening according to Hootsuite `Social listening is the practice of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitor brands, and related keywords.” Using social listening can provide insight into industry trends, how current and future customers view and perceive your products and brand, and help to make directions with a brand that best adheres to customer wants and needs.
Social media is a valuable tool in terms of customer service. Customers have direct message boards, emails, and mentions in social media posts to gain a brand’s attention to an issue or question.
Myth 5) Marketing is just posting a Randomly Posting
Social media is a lot more than just posting. It’s important to note that every post adheres to a business’s goals and objectives on what they want to achieve as a business. To post and forget about it means that you are wasting valuable time and resources because you are not following a strategy for long-term success.
Having a content strategy in place with your social media strategy is the best way to go about posting about your business. This strategy gives you a road map of the meaning and purpose of each post. It is also good practice to have a content calendar in place with scheduled posts ahead of time. We will discuss more on this further in another post).
Myth 6) Social Media can not be Measured.
There are many ways social media can be measured to ensure efficiency. KIPs are known as key performance indicators that help measure certain areas like reach, engagement, frequency, click-through rate, and traffic to a website.
There are also analytic tools on some social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), and TikTok. Useful information such as age, gender, location, and interests can be discovered through social media for marketers to cultivate their social media strategies. Many other tools such as Google Analytics can measure website performance from sources such as social media and even show specific traits such as buying behavior and demographics of that audience.
Myth 7) All Social media Accounts are the Same
While some people may have accounts on every platform that isn’t always the case. Each social media platform serves a specific person that adheres to a specific audience. Facebook has a larger population of older individuals ranging from mid-40s to early 70s. Meanwhile, a platform such as Instagram is more for showcasing images and videos and has an audience between 18 to 30s years old demographic.
Every platform has a specific function
- Facebook: informative connecting with friends and family
- Instagram: image-based
- X (Twitter) Text-based quick news
- TikTok: video creation and sharing
- Snapchat: Messaging and short video sharing
- Pinterest: Image sharing inspiration
As each platform services its own function these attract certain age groups and audiences to these platforms. When crafting your strategy it is important to consider which platforms you will be using and if these platforms deliver the best results for your business strategy.
Myth 8) Social Media will give Instant Results
(Can you make it go Viral?)
It is easy to think that because of how fast social media is with information and news posting about your business will generate instant marketing results. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, social media takes time, experimentation, and investment to find the perfect content for users.
Social media takes research to figure out how an audience behaves such as what time they are active on a platform, what are their interests, what needs and pain points they have? and building trust between users and your band to increase engagement and profit.
All of these things don’t just happen overnight and must be part of an ongoing strategy for social media to cater to your customers and continue to provide valuable content before, during, and after the buyer’s journey.
Myth 9) The more you post the Better
Can you think of a time when you keep seeing a specific ad multiple times and how annoying it gets? Sometimes less is more especially when dealing with the frequency of posts to accounts. When users see too many posts this can build annoyance and feelings of
(hard selling is something that is frowned upon in these parts).
According to Engage, too much posting frequency can cause posts to be ignored causing decreased engagement and cause lower visibility of posts and content. There is no set-in-stone rule for posting but depending on your audience’s activity this can give suggestions on when and how often to post.
Myth 10) Social Media is an Easy Career.
Just like any other career, no job is easy. For social media, there are a lot of tight deadlines, high expectations, research, and planning that go into social media marketing. Social Media Marketing is also relevantly new in the world of business and not everyone really understands how social media really works,
With social media, you have to answer comments, direct messages, and email, and not all of these messages are going to be pleasant but you still have to respond in a professional manner.
Results take time to go into effect and takes a lot of experimenting to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Customer preserves and trends are constantly changing and it’s important to try to stay on top of industry trends as algorithm updates to added social app features can change an entire strategy if not monitored.
Information good and bad can spread like wildfire on social media and can cause a lot of trouble for your brand. Crisis management is just another skill and thing to keep in mind when dealing with social media.
Lastly, as a social media manager, you represent an entire company and have to always maintain consistency with brand image, voice, and reputation.
In Conclusion, social media has many misconceptions that can be confusing to some people. Staying true to your gut will help you succeed even when some people tell you your knowledge and job are unnecessary. It’s important to note that things like social media take time to see results. With hard work and consistency, goals can be obtained.
Thanks for Reading 😄
Roman, E. (2023, May 17). How frequent is too frequent to post on social media?. URL Shortener. https://shorturl.at/ioEX0
Beule, S. D. (2013, December 17). The 80/20 rule: Why just 20% of your social media content should be about your brand. Social Media Today. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/8020-rule-why-just-20-your-social-media-content-should-be-about-your-brand
Newberry, C. (2023, July 5). What is social listening, why it matters + 14 tools to help. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-listening-business/
Social and Caffeinated 