How is your social media marketing going? Here are three ways I am seeing a lot of businesses miss the mark.

Fail #1: No strategy.

Why are you marketing on social media? Why is your brand participating?

Your goal and your plan for getting there needs to be in a documented social media strategy. Without a plan, you are just using up valuable time with no sense of direction.

Growing a social community to engage with your brand is very important. You need to have a multi-pronged effort that works to capture people’s attention and to make a real connection. THAT is the power of social media.

Fail #2: Balancing Organic and Paid Efforts

While Facebook gets the most attention, just about every social media channel restricts what you can do for free. I am all about maximizing on organic options, but you can’t ignore the benefits supplementing this with paid outreach. After all, it makes no sense to spend a lot of time on profiles and content that no one sees.

Great social media marketing starts with organic tasks. Establish a great presence with content and images that speak to your target audience. Create a place that is worthwhile to visit. Make it about your target audience, not about you.

Now you can layer in some paid strategies to bring in an audience. They’ll hang around and engage with you if you have taken the time to create something worthwhile.

Fail #3: Losing Focus

Social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. To see results you need to stick with it for some period of time. You can post multiple times a day, but that doesn’t mean your community will grow that fast.

You need to give people time to find you. They need to see that your content is worthwhile over time to stay connected and pay attention.

That one photo of a cute puppy isn’t enough. Your need a strategy of what you will post and when and stick with it!