5 Lies Social Media Influencers Tell You (And What to Do Instead)

5 Lies Social Media Influencers Tell You (And What to Do Instead)

The engagement on Instagram is also several times better than on other platforms like Facebook. What’s the point of investing all that time and energy if none of these people are going to ever convert at the end of the day? Frequent giveaways like this can make your life simple because they give you interesting content to publish, help steer page engagement, and can be run across several accounts at the same time. Social media costs you nothing You should be Tweeting an average of around five times each day. Plus Facebook video ads are one of the single best ways to build up new audiences. So videos help you increase social media results. That goes for fans and followers on your other social media channels, too. You should, however, use Facebook Ads to drive real business results. You can see who’s still interacting with your posts, commenting on your page, or clicking this content to head back to your site. What’s a social media lie that you’ve found doesn’t work as advertised?

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lies

Social media is still one of the best ways to grow your business.

But there’s a lot of bad information out there.

Every time I speak in front of a new audience, I get asked the same questions.

“Should I be on Instagram?”

“Does Facebook advertising work?”

“What about Snapchat?”

The truth is that it always depends.

There’s no simple answer. Every social media channel can benefit you to one degree or another.

Does that mean you should use all of them?

No, of course not!

That misdirection is where the confusion comes from.

People aren’t exactly sure who they should be listening to. They’re not sure where to start or which conflicting advice they should follow.

Well, I’m here to set the record straight.

Many social media gurus out there aren’t lying to you intentionally.

However, following some bad advice can still kill a brand new business before it even has time to get off the ground.

You’ll waste too much time, energy, and money on the wrong things.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through some of the biggest misconceptions out there.

So by the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to protect yourself.

And you’ll discover what you should be doing instead.

Let’s get started.

Lie #1. You need to use every popular channel

Instagram now has over 700 million users.

The engagement on Instagram is also several times better than on other platforms like Facebook.

So does that mean you should use it? Does that mean Instagram is a ‘must-have’ marketing channel for your business?

Yes and no.

It all depends on your own situation.

For example, one study from a few years back found that the average large company had 178 different social accounts. And this was before Snapchat and Instagram!

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Most businesses can barely manage two or three channels at a time, let alone hundreds.

There are two things to consider before you fire up a new social network.

The first is to determine how you’re going to manage it.

Are you personally going to do everything? Are you going to hire someone? Or are you going to try and add it to your staff’s existing workload?

We’ll dive deeper into this later, but recognize right now that social media isn’t free. No matter what people out there are trying to tell you.

It makes zero sense to start up a new social channel if you’re already having trouble keeping up with the ones you currently have.

Otherwise, why add another thing to your plate if it’s just going to sit there collecting dust?

The second thing to figure out is where your customers are already spending time.

The key to making social media work for your business is to understand that the quality of your audience is more important than the quantity.

That means a high fan or follower count is useless by itself.

What’s the point of investing all that time and energy if none of these people are going to ever convert at the end of the day?

Start by figuring out which channels are best for you.

The Pew Research Center released a study about the average demographics for each channel that might help you narrow it down.

For example, you tend to see a lot of urban, young people on Instagram.

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Do you sell a low-priced consumer product? Are you in fashion, retail, or some other visual businesses?

If so, Instagram is perfect.

The same can’t be said for a platform like LinkedIn, though.

For example, LinkedIn tends to skew a little older in demographics, attracting mostly college-educated professionals.

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Obviously, that makes it ideal for marketing to B2B companies and reaching executives.

Do you see the nuances already?

Then there’s Twitter, which tends to attract younger, high-income earners.

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You might see audience overlap on some of these channels.

For example, a B2B company that targets young tech executives could probably excel with both Twitter and LinkedIn.

Instagram, on the other hand, might be better suited for reaching young consumer audiences.

The point is that you need to ‘put all your eggs in one basket,’ to a certain degree.

Most small- and medium-sized companies don’t have enough money and people to manage everything

So it doesn’t make sense to spread those thin resources even thinner. The results you’ll see won’t be worth the sacrifice in the end.

There is one trick, however, to help you get around this problem.

Cross-posting and repurposing your content on different channels can help you manage multiple platforms with minimal effort.

That works especially well with a social contest or promotion.

Think about it like this. You can host a single giveaway on your site or another third-party application.

Then you can cross-post different messages on multiple social accounts, funneling people back to your contest entry page.

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Frequent giveaways like this can make your life simple because they give you interesting content to publish, help steer page engagement, and can be run across several accounts at the same time.

In other words, you’re investing all of your resources behind a single campaign.

Then you’re expertly leveraging that single campaign to generate returns across multiple accounts.

Lie #2. Social media costs you nothing

You should be Tweeting an average of around five times each day. That includes weekends, too.

What about Instagram? You can push that average up to ten or twenty times a day!

Obviously, you don’t want to publish these all at once.

Ideally, they should be split up throughout the day.

Now, think about what this will take for you to pull it off successfully.

First, you’ll need to create the twenty different pieces of daily content. That adds up to 140 posts over the course of a week!

Second, you’re going to need to schedule these out and respond as new comments roll in.

Who has the time to do these things?!

Do you want to hire someone to do it for you? No problem.

Except that’s going to set you back at least $3,500 on the low end for a new in-house, entry-level employee.

It might even run you up to $15,000 each month for a professional content company.

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People think social media is “free” because all it takes is time and energy.

However, most business owners are strapped for time as it is.

You probably don’t have an extra 20 hours each week to spend creating content and managing social channels.

But you don’t have an extra $15k per month lying around, either.

Unfortunately, these costs show no signs…

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