7 Most Common Mistakes Brands Make on Social Media (And How to Fix Them)
Our team has edited/approved over 15,000 pieces of social media content for brands.
Here are the 7 most common mistakes and how you can fix them:
1. Focusing on a self-centered angle (bragging) 🥇
If the post is about how great a brand is and doesn’t provide any other value to the audience, it will come across as bragging.
Example: Protein bar company
Self-centered copy: “We are in Whole Foods Nationwide!”
The fix: Changing the angle to how this news benefits customers.
So it would read like this, “If you shop at Whole Foods, look out for us in the snack aisle. Getting daily protein just got a bit easier!”
2. Making the viewer jump through hoops to complete a story 🤬
Nobody wants to click the link in your bio to view more of the content. Telling half-stories and then asking the audience to change platforms creates unnecessary friction.
Imagine watching the first 15 minutes of a movie and then having the Usher come and tell you to change theaters to keep watching. You’d lose half the audience. The same happens when you ask customers to platform jump to finish a story.
The fix: Close the loop on your story in each post. This means using the native tools provided on each social platform.
3. Using ad creative as an organic social 📢
Beautiful product photos are great assets for ads. However, they fall flat as organic social media posts.
The fix: Use organic social for community building and more unproduced content, and then supplement that with paid media using a mix of beautiful static assets and UGC videos.
4. Letting Legal make stylistic changes ✍️
Legal is not marketing. They are there to tell you if your messaging is compliant, not to direct marketing strategy.
The fix: When sending content for approval, set boundaries with legal and ask for Y/N approvals (with space for notes).
5. Posting to Hit a Quota 📊
You should have good post frequency. Quotas are a slippery slope. They incentive the number of posts created, not the quality of the content. Like a chef who wouldn’t serve half-done food, you shouldn’t post half-baked content.
The fix: Focus on content effectiveness over content frequency numbers.
6. Publishing something once 1️⃣
I’ve seen countless brands spend a ton of resources on creating content only to publish once.
This is a crime against content and your budget.
The fix: As my friend Ross Simmonds says, “Create once, distribute forever.” When you create content, you should have a distribution plan that includes distributing it over and over again.
7. Too much jargon 👨🔬
Industry jargon is not your friend on social media. Posts filled with complex sentences and words people have to look up don’t perform well. Sure, you might feel clever, but the content will be ineffective.
The fix: Explain it like you’re talking to a five-year-old. Seriously.
