People tend to think that social media is the cure-all to traffic woes. However, it’s just one part of a balanced strategy necessary to drive traffic to your brand.
It’s not automatic and takes a lot of effort and thought into creating the right content and sending the correct images that represent your brand.
Here’s our list of the 8 most common mistakes that lead to brands failing in their efforts on Instagram.
Hopefully, you won’t make the same!
Doing Giveaways
A children’s clothing store thinks giving away an iPad will attract useful followers.
iPads attract Instagram followers from an endless number of areas, and most of the attracted participants are not interested in the actual children’s clothing products the store sells.
Well, because the brand hosts this popular Instagram giveaway, followers increase, but the actual engagement does not change.
This is very pandering and it lowers the perceived value of your product.
If people show enough passion and you do your best to interact and show appreciation to the fans you have, they will be more than willing to purchase your product.
Real followers actually like your brand and the message you stand for.
Following People In Unrelated Niches
When choosing to follow either other businesses or individuals, the main concern is interest.
If a jewelry store tries to build connections with a gun store or huntsmen, chances are those connections will not promote jewelry.
However, if a jewelry store follows fashion-concerned women who show previous interest in modern couture, consumer action will likely increase because the following is natural rather than reaching out too far.
When you follow someone on Instagram, the hope is that they follow you back.
Irrelevant followers are unlikely to follow you back and worse, you could attract fake followers who will just end up trolling your posts.
Buying Fake Followers
People have known for a long time that fake followers don’t interact with your brand at all and if you have 1 million followers and your post only gets 4 likes, people will know you are a fraud.
You lose any authenticity you may have had.
Keep in mind that if a brand is being open and truthful about wanting to increase contact with customers by providing interesting Instagram content, often the plan builds itself.
Faking popularity is unacceptable in social media marketing because it creates imbalance between activity and the number of followers, which is obvious and unattractive, so it turns consumers away because the brand cannot be trusted.
Don’t try and “fake it till you make it.”
It might be an ego boost to see that large number, but you’d be better off growing followers organically with people who actually care about your product.
If you can’t build like that, then you might need to pivot to a new product that people are actually looking for.
There are millions of niches – don’t be a faker.
Posting Filler Content
The saying less is more applies to Instagram.
If you are flooding people’s feeds with junk unrelated to your brand, you’ll put a bad taste in their mouth.
It’s understandable that you want to have plenty of content on your Instagram, but liking and sharing things that aren’t related to your brand can actually weaken the power of your message.
The point of your Instagram is to drive people to your store in order to get more sales.
Posting cute kitten pictures might be tempting and get you a few giggles, but it takes away from what you’re actually trying to do.
If you are indeed selling items that relate to cats, then this content would be meaningful to the audience. Always keep your message relevant.
The average human attention span is only 8 seconds, so every message that you send which has nothing to do with your goal distances you further from your customers.
Spamming People
Being authentic is the key to Instagram success. Nobody wants to be spammed with the same robotic message. It’s like an instant off switch in someone’s head.
It’s different if you actually study people who like products similar to yours and send them personalized messages without copying and pasting them.
That builds authenticity. Mass robotic spam to as many people as possible does not.
Not Posting Consistently
You want your Instagram to be active so your product and business is always on the feed of your fans.
This will help when you release new products, have sales, or are looking to interact to try and get ideas on what to make.
There’s a big difference between lukewarm followers and true fans who will be willing to help your brand because they love what you are doing.
By posting consistently, you show your fans that same effort that you care about them.
This doesn’t need to be a daily thing – you can use programs like Hootsuite or Buffer to space out the timings of your posting and the content you plan to release by spending a few hours per week brainstorming and gathering all of it together.
Using Autofollow Software
Instagram has gotten smarter at detecting people using bots to automate illegal processes like batch following and unfollowing.
This is called follower churn and it’s a way to get your account banned and lose all the credibility you’ve built with your audience.
Not Using Videos
We’re in the age of video and picture now. Videos will give your user a much better look at the products you have to offer and it’s harder to stage them.
Sometimes, a video of your product in action resonates deeply with your potential customers and it’s way better than the standard in-your-face advertising.
If you want to take your product branding to the next level then do not make any of the aforementioned mistakes.
Now go and start using Instagram the right way!
