5 Social Media Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Growth

New year, new social strategy! This month on Social Savvy with Kristy, we’re uncovering the 5 sneaky mistakes that could be sabotaging your social media growth—and how to fix them.

From turning engagement into a two-way street to making your content strategy actually work for you, we’re sharing practical tips to kick off 2025 with confidence.

If you’re ready to leave bad habits behind and embrace a smarter, more effective social media game plan, this episode is your must-listen guide!

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Chapters

• 2:55 Posting Without a Strategy
• 5:44 Ignoring Analytics
• 7:59 Overloading on Sales Posts
• 9:57 Not Engaging with Your Audience
• 11:34 Overusing or Misusing Trends
• 12:55 Recap

Transcript

hello welcome back to a new episode and a new year with the free dive podcast thank thank you so much for being here uh I hope that everyone had a nice couple of weeks off uh if you're not from New England which I know because of analytics that not everybody is I've got some people far away um we're not having a very snowy wintry winter this winter which uh I don't mind at all I'm a snow hater here so um we're having kind of a bizarre cold rainy uh non snowy winter so wherever you are I hope that you're getting the weather that you that you love this is the weather that I'm I'm pretty happy with I love the rain and I'm happy being cold so that I can bundle up if I'm not if I can't paddle board and I can't be swimming it might as well be cold so that I can be in a heated blanket and be snuggled up and be in my sweaters so I don't want to have to shovel and plow snow so this is perfect for me but anyway that's what's going on here on our side of the world I hope you are enjoying it wherever you are in the world but anyway we are back and we're back with new content we're back with a new year um it's weirding my brain out how much time has passed and then we're already into the new year so we're R strategizing and looking over our plans for the year um but if you're here you must still be enjoying our content so I'm glad that you are today I was is whipping up the content for today and looking ahead for the next few months and um strategizing with the team and I think that we're going to have some like a couple of months of really fun content um so keep coming back and hopefully you'll keep enjoying it but anyway um social Savvy episode on the first week of the month and I thought I would start the year off with um giving you guys some mistakes of the past cuz we love it when we talk about things that christe's done badly I I am a believer in just unveiling um and being honest about how you know you've screwed up so people can benefit from it because I'm also a person who um I'm very much a I don't learn from my own mistakes I learn from the mistakes of others so if I can provide that same thing for you guys you can learn from me why not you know so today we're talking about five social media mistakes that are hurting your growth and we're going to go into why these same mistakes are ones that I had been making myself um and also why why they mistakes and how you can fix them well let's just dive in not going to make this too long of an episode with mistake number one posting without a strategy uh if you're new to social media or even if you've been in it for a long time sometimes it can feel like you forgotten about it and so you can you just need to jump back in and just post anything I've got to get something up on my Instagram I've got to just throw something up on Facebook uh we got to make a Tik Tok and that's good because you want to be present on those sites I'm gesturing a lot sorry um but random posting confuses your audience and it weakens your brand identity so if you have created your brand identity you need to stick within what it is plan content around themes or pellar meaning education your promotion your engagement use tools like content planners to stay organized now my tip for this is you have to do what works best for you because as a digital marketing company we have access to all kinds of digital planners that exist hubs HubSpot or hootsuite or whatever um every kind of Excel sheet or whatever that exists but Kristy's brain doesn't compute to it I I am still a person that uses a paper binder planner um which people make fun of me because I'm in the digital world and why am I writing out and carrying around this massive book planner everywhere I go something about my brain doesn't do digital planning and so for me I'm like if I force myself and try it I it I can't keep up with it and so why why what am I forcing but what does work for me is I have all of my uh calendars written out on paper and if I plan ahead basically one of the things I do is I print out um I think it's called print a calendar for the year and I write in every box my plan for when I'm going to post stuff so like next week I'm going to post this on Instagram on Monday Tuesday Wednesday these are my plans um and that's what works for Kristy's brain and you have to figure out what it is like your like what works best for you and and go with that and that might take some like trial and error um espe and it's more convenient frankly if you can do the digital thing because you can plan things out in advance I can't really do that well being a paper pen and paper lady but um I have I have found my ways around that but anyway um use content calendars to stay or organized so um get get get ahead the best you can do what works for you mistake number two ignoring your analytics and again if you're anything like me analytics is just a whole bunch of numbers written out just don't go together and don't make sense and I'm not a math lady and I leave the analytics to the analytic people because that's boring and I'm a creative unfortunately it doesn't work like that um you have to use analytics to your benefit there are stories in the numbers so what are the stories telling you where can you find the best analytics um this is what this is something that I have found unfortunately certain social media platforms just don't give you the best analytics to tell you anything I find that to be really true of Instagram um they give you some good stats and some that are like really stupid um Tik Tok you really have to fight in a professional account to like get behind the scenes and find out like who your audience is and when they're online and all that um but use the resources you have to your benefit um including if you are fortunate like me and have in your agency or at your disposal people you know analytics um like data analysts so I use the analysts on my team to be like what does this all mean somebody explain it to me cuz I don't get this so I will have them look over look over everything give them logins to stuff and be like can you help me and they do if you don't have that um available to you use what you have get into the back end of your apps and if you see that people are online most your your followers on on Mondays in the afternoon that's when you're going to post use the information that you have um to benefit it use platform insights to track engagement and reach focus on top performing content to guide future posts so not just time not just engagement but what were your top performing um what was the top performing content that you had make more content like that we've talked about that a lot okay mistake number three overloading on sales posts so this could include call to actions this could include hyper focusing on what you want them to do for you if you come in real strong um from your angle of like I want you guys to do this do this people can tell people follow accounts for Value not for constant ads and here's the thing on that think about how you watch and look at anything think about if you're willing to stay on Hulu because you really enjoy something to just fight through the ads or your favorite podcast for instance I just started a podcast where oh my word there must be an ad every like I don't know 7 to 10 minutes and it's so irritating to me but I'm willing to stay just because I love the podcast and I have figured out how to fast forward through them so when it comes to social media um people don't want to be irritated by your ads however with a good marketing strategy and if interwoven in what you are advertising and sales pitching there is value to your audience people might stay so my my um advice to that is create content that you would enjoy and wouldn't irritate you look at it from the eyes of your consumer and if you're not sure take it to your friends take it to your family have them give you their true unbiased opinion is this irritating would you swipe past this follow the 8020 rule 80% valuable content 20% promotion mix in educational tips behind the scenes or in inspirational posts so you have to just kind of throw in a lot of that alongside what your what your sales pitches are mistake number three not engaging with your audience you have to pay to play um and and this was something I also it it took a long time not a long time it took some time for me to see um you know you you have to be you have to be a good game player that you want people to be engaging on your posts well other people want that too so you can build really strong relationships on social media with other brands with with other agencies with other people in your field if you are spending just a little bit of time each week each day if you have it just giving some engagement back and forth to these other brands they will reciprocate it so respond to comments respond to DMS respond to mentions uh start conversations with polls questions funny memes anytime you see conversations happening or you see a poll to vote on vote on it if there's a question that you feel like you can dive in and give your opinion on um share memes share things that people say it's not hard throw it up on your story um people appreciate that it makes them notice you who is this person that like decided to share my real it may like wow I'm going to go follow this account now if you've ever had that happen to you like it means it means a lot like if you're not already a really big Creator like it makes you excited so having that in return it's uh you're being a good game player mistake number five five overusing or misusing Trends so why it's a problem jumping on every Trend can dilute your brand or feel forced and I'm sure you've seen this it feels really awkward and and like out of place if you see the wrong kind of creator making the wrong kind of content like cringy like this isn't have anything to do with what you do like you can just tell you can feel it and if you're making it and you feel weird about it probably a sign so here's how you fix it only participate in trends that align with your Brand's voice and values add your own unique spin to stand out so your takeaway from this is really just you don't need to feel like you need to jump on every single Trend that you see every meme going around but if there is one going around and you come up with your idea of how you can make your company agency brand uh business participate in a way that still locks in what your brand does then do it and if you can't then don't you don't have to jump on every sound trending and every dance that's trending every meme that people are making um Don't Force It is what we're getting at so here are just some final closing thoughts um as we're heading into the new year and social media it's always changing and um I think a lot of us feel like we're just kind of like floundering in how to use social media and feeling awkward in it um and so often times we don't try because we feel stupid it's feedback I get all the time like people are embarrassed to post on social media that is like the number one thing I hear all the time they feel weird they feel awkward they feel embarrassed especially when it comes to posting their own face and I get that because I you know I I used to be there and then eventually I got to a place where I'm like what and here I am it's what I look like what are you going to do like fine make fun of me what do I care like so you get to a point where you're just like this is what could help me have success and that's worth it to me for maybe frankly have you ever heard like the first time you get a troll is when you know that you have full you've made it man that feels really good and and we H we had that on a Tik Tok a few weeks ago where people were getting so hot and bothered in a Tik Tok that we posted about it was like feeling people getting political over AI stuff and I'm just like yeah like we we're getting we're making it we have bothered some people it's just it's stupid stuff and it's like really nothing that matters it wasn't even a hot opinion but that's always the fear like anytime you post is just like are people going to be offended by what I said are people like going to hate this photo of me or this video are they going to send it to somewhere and make fun of me do it do it whatever so don't like like don't overthink it too much which sounds counterintuitive because I'm telling you to think about it so I apologize um but here's here's just a recap on all of that where um mistakes that we are avoiding making is posting without strategy ignoring your analytics overloading on your sales posts not engaging enough with your audience and overusing and misusing Trends so um those are things that we are leaving in 2024 and we're going to improve together in 2025 there's always room for improvement right always for all of us I don't care how long you've been you know doing this or if you're brand new to it um mistakes are just opportunities to grow that's how we're going to view it that's how we see it you you can work on and fix one or two of these things there's always room for improvement um and keep on working on your calls to action and and you will if you keep on working on these things especially consistency eventually eventually you will see growth so I believe in you um I'm here by your side and tag me in any social media post ever that you want um at at Seaoint digital and um I'm happy to like it comment it share it critique it whatever you want I'm here to support you so thank you for being here um we'll be back we will be back keep coming back and if there's specific social media um Trends whatever that you uh want me to give my unsolicited opinion into next happy to do that I'm here for you so we will be back and we'll see you guys next time