Social media can be a great way to connect with customers and promote your business. But it can also be a minefield. Make one wrong move, and you could alienate your target audience or, even worse, get banned from the platform altogether.

In this blog post, we’ll run through the five worst ways to market your business on social media so you can avoid them at all costs.

Here are five of the most common mistakes businesses make when marketing on social media—and how to avoid them.

When it comes to social media, you should focus on posting quality, well-thought-out pieces of content rather than flooding your followers’ feeds with a bunch of uninspired fluff.

If you’re constantly posting irrelevant content, people are going to start tuning out pretty quickly. So take the time to figure out what kind of content your target audience is interested in, and the vast majority of your posts are along those lines.

Ensure your social media content aligns with your brand and speaks to your target audience.

If you’re unsure what content will resonate with your audience, take some time to check out what other companies in your industry are doing.

You can also use social media listening tools to see what topics are generating the most buzz online. Just remember, before you hit “publish,” ask yourself if the content you’re sharing is truly relevant and interesting—and you’re always able to test this as you go.

We get it, you’re trying to market your business, and that’s why people are following you in the first place.

But if every single post is a sales pitch, people will get sick of it pretty quickly, and they’ll either stop following you or never actually buy anything from you because they’ll tune out your constant attempts to sell them something.

Instead, focus on content that educates and entertains your audience. Share blog posts, infographics, videos, case studies, behind-the-scenes looks at your company, and other content that doesn’t specifically talk about your product or service.

When it comes to promotional material, mix it with your other content and keep it interesting and relevant.

So how much promotional material should you be posting? A good general rule of thumb is around 20%. The other 80% should be a mix of interesting content, industry news, and anything else that might be of interest to your target audience.

Social media is all about conversation and engagement, so if you’re not taking the time to respond to comments, answer questions, or even like and share content from your followers, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to build relationships and increase awareness of your brand.

Make sure you’re giving your followers the attention they deserve, and don’t be afraid to reach out to them directly. The more interactions you have, the more likely people will become invested in your brand, which can lead to increased engagement and even sales.

Set aside time daily (or every other day) to comment on other posts, reply to mentions and messages, and interact with your audience.

This will help show that you’re listening and paying attention to what your followers are saying, and it will help build trust in your brand.

If you’re not consistently posting on social media, people are going to forget about you fairly quickly. It’s important to be consistent with your posting schedule and make sure you post at least a few times a week.

Also, be consistent with the quality of your content. If you post something amazing one day, but then the next day, your content is just meh and uninspired, people might start to lose interest.

Planning out your content in advance will help ensure that you’re being consistent and save you time in the long run by allowing you to batch-create content rather than having to come up with something new (and relevant) to post every day. 

Last but not least, one of the biggest mistakes businesses make when marketing on social media is failing to measure their results along the way.

Without measuring your results (aka analytics), it will be impossible to determine whether or not your efforts are paying off—and, more importantly, how you can improve them moving forward.

Luckily, tons of great tools make measuring your results quick and easy—so there’s no excuse for not doing it! Tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter analytics can help you track how well your content performs in terms of views, shares, comments, likes, and more.

By measuring your results regularly, you can analyze what’s working and what isn’t so that you can adjust your approach and make the most of your social media marketing efforts.

It’s also important to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing and how well they’re performing. This will give you an idea of what’s working in your industry and help inform your strategy moving forward.