It’s easy to make mistakes in digital marketing, especially if it’s not something you’ve done before. There are some simple things you can do to avoid the biggest mistakes though, the first of which is to keep reading. I’ve picked out five of the biggest digital marketing mistakes so you can avoid them yourself. 

Doing too much at once
It might seem like you need a presence on every social channel as well as a website and an app, but it takes a lot of time, money and resource to manage all your digital output. The mistake people make is thinking you can manage multiple digital products in the time it had been taking to manage just the one. Being spread thin without enough resource to manage them all results in the quality of the products decreasing and a bad product means less engagement. Instead, focus on a few things and do them really well. Start with your website and build something simple but effective. You will then have a solid foundation you can build upon as your resource levels increase. 

Not having a plan
If you set up social media accounts without any plan of how you will use them, it’s probably not going to end well. What tone of voice will you have? (This blog from Kirsty Marrins might help) How and when will you respond to people? How will you talk about your organisation? How will it be branded? What accounts are you going to share? How are you going to engage people in conversation? What key hashtags will you use? What type of content will you post? All these questions and others need answering. Once you have a strategy, don’t forget that it will need constantly updating as your demographics change as well as the change in how people use social media. 

Making social media an afterthought
This is a mistake I see again and again. An organisation posts something important to their website and only remembers to share it via their social media channels hours or sometimes days later. Social media shouldn’t be something you remember to do at a later date, it should be central to your wider communications plan. Campaigns will be a lot more successful if they are integrated and make use of all your communications channels at once. 

Not knowing your digital audience
Who are the people engaging with your content? How often do you look at the analytics for your website and social media channels? The metrics provided are telling you some really important things about your audience including their age, gender, what time of day they are online and more. It’s this information that should be informing a lot of your strategy as well as the content and structure of your website. By writing specifically for your audience, you will increase the possibility of them engaging with you. It’s also important to know more about the audiences you aren’t reaching so you can find ways to change that. 

Jumping on every digital trend
New social media networks and trends for how to use them pop up almost every week. Whilst it’s good to know what’s going on in the world of digital and social, jumping on every new website might not be the best idea. You won’t be sure how long the popularity of these new sites will last and it will be an extra strain on resources that you might not be prepared for. Another reason to avoid this is that they might just not be the right fit for your organisation. Instead, do your research, understand the new trends and take the time to figure out if it’s right thing for your business to get on board with. There’s nothing stopping you from setting up an account to save your username just in case!

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Looking for more digital marketing advice for your business or charity? Check out my marketing advice tag to view all blogs on the subject.

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