Social Media Marketing For Businesses: Expectations Vs. Reality

Today, social media is not just for entertainment or making new friends, but has become an excellent tool that helps you promote your offerings and increase your customer base.

According to a recent survey report by experts, more than 3.6 billion people are active on social media, and the number is estimated to rise to 4.41 billion by the end of 2025.

Undeniably, establishing a strong social media presence is extremely important for every business. If performed right, social media marketing helps you connect with the right audience, builds brand loyalty, boosts website traffic, and increases sales.

Well, popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have made it insanely easy to set up a business page to promote your products and services on social media. In fact, there is no barrier to create a company page on social media platforms, except for having a personal account.

Do you know, 90 percent of businesses use social media to advertise their offerings and boost their brand. Certainly, social media marketing is a powerful way to reach the targeted audience, increase brand awareness, improve brand loyalty, and boost sales. It can bring remarkable success to your business. Because of the tremendous potential of social media, people think that it can be a remedy for all the marketing problems, and set unrealistic expectations for their social media campaigns.

Let’s dive into some of those impracticable expectations and challenges you may face once you step into social media marketing. These ‘expectations versus reality’ scenarios not just break your myths but also help you improve your social media marketing game.

Expectation #1: More Likes & Followers Equals More Sales

More Likes & Followers Equals More Sales

Usually, one of the major tasks of a social media marketing team is to drive more likes and followers. Most of the businesses consider “number of likes and followers” as a metric to gauge the performance of social media marketing efforts. In fact, they use such metrics to identify the type of content that drives results. They believe that just having more ‘likes’ and more followers can drive more leads, more conversions, and more sales

Reality

Certainly, ‘likes,’ shares, and followers are important metrics. These are good indicators to determine the ability of your content to engage with your audience. Well, your number of ‘likes’ and followers may look good in corporate presentations, but they may be far from driving conversions. To get this fact, you first need to understand the complete process of social media marketing.

Today, a basic search on – how to increase your ‘likes’ and followers, lead to the sources of professional services that enable you to buy followers for your social media business page.

Do these fake followers bring conversion to your business?

Certainly No!

So, why such services even exist?

Well, the reason is – social proof.

Business owners believe that more followers and ‘likes,’ even the fake ones make your business look established, credible, and trustworthy which results in more sales. Fake ‘likes’ and followers may give some short-term results but will hurt your business later. So, don’t just run after these metrics. Effective social media marketing needs consistent efforts and patience. However, if you want quick and measurable results then hiring an experienced social media agency can be the smartest move.

Expectation #2: Creating Exceptional Content Is Sufficient in Social Media Marketing

Creating Exceptional Content Is Sufficient in Social Media Marketing

Content plays a major role in social media marketing. It has the potential to increase the engagement rate of your social media business page.

Well, content is the king of digital space but only content will not give you the desired results. There is no point in publishing high-quality content if it is not reaching your targeted audience.

Reality

When it comes to driving conversions to your business then content creation is just one step of many. A successful content marketing strategy needs a holistic approach. It’s no secret that content means a lot in social media marketing. But, without a cohesive strategy, it won’t be seen by anyone! Therefore, if you are want to reap desired results in social media marketing, then craft a unique and results-driven content marketing strategy. In order to create a successful content strategy, you need to focus on these four crucial elements – Marketing Objectives, Distribution, Paid Advertising, and Repurposing Strategy.

Apart from content marketing, many other activities are included in social media marketing, such as determining the targeted audience, data extraction for deriving meaningful conclusions, creating and refining strategies, and lot more.

Expectation #3: Publishing Same Post On All Social Media Platforms To Drive Good Results

Publishing Same Post On All Social Media Platforms To Drive Good Results

Publishing the same content on all social media platforms at one time is known as “Cross-posting”. More than half of the marketers use this approach to keep their social media accounts active.

Is cross-posting a good social media marketing technique?

Surely, cross-posting is a time saver method, but may not drive expected results!

Reality

Every platform is different and has a different audience according to their interests. You can’t post the same content on all social media channels. There are five biggest social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. About 3.6 billion social media users are divided into these social media platforms according to their interests. The tone, character length, visuals, language, trending section, formatting, hashtags are completely different for every social media platform.  Thus, you can’t just post the same thing over all social media platforms and expect good results.

If you can’t create different social media posts for all platforms, then at least make slight differences in them. For example, if you are posting on Twitter then keep the character count shorter. Also, make sure that your post is in the right resolution. These simple changes can help you acquire better results from cross-posting.

In the Nutshell!

It’s no secret that social media marketing is important for every business and can drive outstanding results to your business. But, if you wish to win the social media game then you need to focus on setting the right expectations!

Don’t run after the myths. Create a goal-oriented social media marketing strategy with the right expectations and if you have already one, then refine it!

Always remember…

“Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a solid plan.” – Felicia Lin