Four Reasons Why You’re Not Seeing ROI on Social

Social media has now been around long enough that a good number of brands are doing a really great job — our uncles and aunts, not so much. But even if you’re not online all day like me, you can tell which ones are doing a better job engaging with their followers and producing content that their audience wants. To get a better understanding of why your branded social media isn’t working, read my tips below.

1. You’re too focused on trends

“OUR Harlem Shake video will be the best of them all!”

There’s always going to be a new trending hashtag or holiday to post about. But should you? Unless you have a relationship to the topic and a compelling story to add, you should probably avoid it. This is the “noise” and “clutter” that everyone is trying to use their digital X-Acto knife to cut through. People can tell when you’re making a genuine attempt at it and when you’re forcing it.

The brands that have done it the best in the past (Oreo, Moon Pies, Arby’s) have one thing in common: they know themselves. The better you understand your story, your followers, and their perception of you, the better the position you’ll be in to get a taste of those sweet, sweet internet points.

2. You’re too automated

The Ron Popeil approach

Platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social have helped to take a lot of the legwork out of social media. But if you’re setting and forgetting your content each week, it’s going to become stale. You need to do daily monitoring to see if what you’re publishing is creating engagement and conversations, and listen to your audience to see what kind of content and updates that they want from you. Don’t post for yourself.

So how do you craft posts in a way that will get more engagement? Two sources that I use are Google Trends — finding things that people are searching for that related to our clients’ products — and Pinterest Business — art direction, some content ideas. The most simple one is to just ask your followers what kind of things they care about getting from your page.

Footnote: Ron Popeil is one of the greatest marketers of our time, it’s just that maybe we shouldn’t apply the same ideas to our content as we do to our at-home rotisseries.

3. You’re too focused on analytics

Burning ants with a magnifying glass

Obviously, social analytics are important. They allow you to take an instant look at how your campaigns are performing, and they help you to show the value of what you’re doing to your boss, client or guardians. This instantaneous feedback is part of what makes social media so great for marketing.

But that’s also a little bit of its downfall. If you’re too narrowed in on metrics to analyze your performance, you’re going to kill a lot of good work. Allow your campaigns some time to breathe and reach a good amount of people before you start tweaking them. If things took off immediately on social media, everyone would be doing it and doing it well.

4. You’re not being strategic

If you try to reach everyone, you’ll reach no one

From live videos and location filters to unique ad types and images, it’s never been easier to create and publish high-quality content. But one of the biggest missteps I see from marketers is an attempt to connect their marketing goals to social media tactics (posts, videos, ads, etc.), and completely skipping over the thing that’s in all of our titles: strategy-ist.

You can have the best videos and graphics, but if you aren’t dialed in on your audience — who they are, what type information they want, and how they prefer to consume it — your engagement will flat line. Another part of strategy is to look at what platforms you’re on. Not every platform is for every brand. I’d suggest that you find the two or three that are the best for executing your strategy and reaching your target audience.

I could talk about strategy all day, but to save you the time I’ll end it here. Any questions? Leave a comment below or @ me on Twitter.