5 Reasons You're Not Winning at Social Media

Stop me when this starts to sound familiar. You've been giving the social media thing a try. Maybe you're handling it yourself or you've gone all in and hired an expert to manage it for you. Everything seems to be going okay. After all, posts are going out and nobody's publicly shamed you yet. But you just don't feel like you're "winning" the social media game. 

Before you fire the person who has been helping you (or fire yourself if you're the one in charge), make sure one of the following isn't the reason behind your lackluster results:

You're Not Taking It Seriously

Sure, you know you need to be on social. You've got your platforms and you're posting to them. When you have time. Or when you remember.

But if you're not scheduling time into your day (or week if you like to batch tasks) to think about and organize your content for social media, you're not serious about it. You're only playing. And your business deserves better than that.

You Don't Have a Plan

If your idea of a social media strategy is digging through your camera roll to see what you could possibly share on Instagram or blindly hitting boost post every time Facebook notifies you that you have a post that's performing well, it's time to do better.

Having a strategy doesn't have to mean you're sucking all the fun out of social media. All it does is ensure you're doing more than just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. 

I'm sure when you started your business, you had a vision. It's time to make sure your social media strategy is honoring that vision.

Lest it seem like I'm only talking to the more lackadaisical entrepreneurs out there, just because you've the type of person who has their five-year plan taped to the bathroom mirror where they can see it, doesn't mean you're getting off easy either!

You're Misinterpreting the Data

While it may be true that what gets measured gets managed, if your social media manager has whiplash from how many times you've changed the direction of your social media efforts based on the "data", it's time to take a step back. You need to be absolutely sure that when you make an adjustment, you're not changing too much too fast. When a type of post seems to be underperforming, maybe it's the posting time or something in the design that is responsible for the poor performance and not just the content. 

You also need to be sure that you're using the right metric to measure your results. If you're in a service-based business and you're busier than ever since you last adjusted your social media strategy, yet each post performs "poorly" based on numbers alone, then you might want to entertain the idea that the numbers aren't the best indicator of whether your social media strategy is working or not.

You're Overanalyzing It

If your middle name could be Analysis Paralysis, you need to get out of your own way. If your obsession over every little detail is getting in the way of you pulling the trigger and getting your content out to the world on a consistent basis, you need to learn how to take a deep breath and say, "Done is better than perfect." 

Don't hold yourself (and your business) back because you're not sure if something looks good enough or is interesting or is the "right" thing to be posting. If you never put anything out there, you'll never know. 

You're Not Staying in Your Lane

If you find yourself surfing a competitor's Instagram feed at midnight and taking screenshots of things to email to your designer to R&D for you, you're doing your brand a big disservice.

Trust yourself. You know what your customer needs. Put on your blinders and your earplugs and tune everyone else out. You're the expert. Nobody is going to do it like you do. So make sure your brand is authentically you and not just a cheap imitation of your competitor.

Ok, let's share: what are you guilty of? Share it with me in the comments below!