Harnessing your social media presence to generate sales and drive business growth is no longer about how many followers you have.

While a larger audience could correlate with more sales, a hyper focus on follower numbers is not enough to power your business forwards. In fact, being too preoccupied with follower count is one of the biggest social selling mistakes you can make. However, there are also plenty of other pitfalls on the way to social success.

With the average user spending three hours per day scrolling their social feeds, there’s a huge opportunity for brands to connect with consumers through networks like Facebook and Instagram. Getting it right is well worth the time and effort – with data confirming that global sales via social media topped £776 billion / $996 billion in 2022.

Mistake 1: Your content focus is too sales orientated.

You want to sell on social media. But making your content too sales orientated could have exactly the opposite effect. That’s because posts which are too promotional can be off putting for your audience. Social media is a place to be entertained and informed – so a constant barrage of promotional posts can quickly fail to impress.

Instead of dedicating your feed to product news, promo codes and sales messages, try to mix in other forms of content to encourage your audience to stick around. Videos, memes, infographics, polls, reshares and relevant news items or blog snippets are all useful for breaking up the sales posts and can add value to the social media experience.

Mistake 2: You’re not consistent enough.

Having a big push on social only when you have items to promote, or annual sales to announce will limit your results. The way social algorithms work means that you need to be consistently sharing and engaging with your audience in order to generate reach. If you fail to post regularly, the posts you do share may fall into a black hole and never reach your audience.

Mistake 3: Not engaging with your audience.

In order to build a rapport with your audience, you need to engage with them. Building a loyal community requires you to prioritise engagement with your followers. That means replying to questions with genuine, helpful comments, liking and sharing posts your brand is tagged in and replying as quickly as possible to direct messages. You can also bolster engagement and ensure your audience is getting what they need from you by asking questions and using polling features.

Mistake 4:

Taking an ad-hoc approach to your social content will inevitably mean that you miss out on natural sales opportunities. While some content should be sporadic, for example to tie into events in popular culture, the bulk of what you share should be planned in advance. Reviewing social media holiday calendars and wider events means that you can tie in your promotions and create timely campaigns that are more likely to resonate with your audience.