News and Insights
Top 8 social media challenges in 2021 and how to tackle them
April 7, 2021
With every marketer, brand, and agency on social media, it’s hard to stand out. However, by tackling these social media marketing challenges head-on, you can see higher growth via social media and achieve your goals better.
We listed the top 8 social media challenges to get over in 2021 and how you can tackle them to maximise your social media growth.
1. Standing out against the noise
Everyone’s looking to make it big online and social media gives you the opportunity to attract the right audience and grow your reach. However, with so many profiles vying for attention, you need to be able to stand out among the billions of social media accounts to be able to reach your audience.
One way to stand out against the noise is by carving out your niche and defining the kind of content you intend to create. Look into what profiles similar to yours share and identify the gaps in the content they create and figure out what you can do to be unique and memorable.
So, for instance, many profiles share digital marketing tips. Instead of generalising your expertise, you can narrow down your scope to share digital marketing tips for SaaS or agencies. This niche can help you attract the right audience faster and share content that no one else would be putting out.
2. Dilemma of choosing between quality or quantity
One of the biggest social media marketing challenges that many people face is having to choose between sharing many posts or sharing very few posts that are of high-quality. Most marketers make the mistake of thinking quality and quantity are mutually exclusive. So, they end up either sharing a lot of content but without any structure, branding, or quality in their content or they share well-researched and designed posts once a week.
Finding the right balance is key. When creating your social media posts, you shouldn’t just bulk create all your posts. Instead, ensure that each post has meaningful content and drives the kind of value you hope to create. Invest in graphic design software and when designing your creative assets, stick to a specific style and define your branding, whether it’s your colours or your font type.
However, don’t over-optimise! Once you’ve defined your design templates and have a clear idea of the content, you shouldn’t be taking more than 15 to 30 minutes to put together one social media design.
3. Building a ready-to-buy audience
Many marketers make the rookie mistake of pushing a service or a product and asking their audience to buy within their first few social media posts. For one, during these initial days, they would already have a low follower count. Moreover, these followers are still getting to know you so asking them to buy from you early on will hinder your ability to build a relationship with them and retain them as loyal followers.
Instead, use your first year of active social media posting to only give value to your followers. Show them to kind of value you can provide and get their buy-in before you ask for anything in return. This strategy helps you build your credibility online, build a long-lasting relationship with followers, and achieve your goals better.
4. Staying consistent with posting
Raise your hand if you’ve shared a post on social media and then disappeared for a week or two. We’re all guilty of inconsistency with our social media strategy. Since there is no urgency, social media is often looked at as a low-priority task and it often takes a backseat due to other deadline-bound projects on our plate.
However, by staying consistent with posting on social media, your audience can build an expectation to see your post on their feed at a specific time every day and would start to look forward to it. This consistency is sure to pay off, helping you compound your growth, whether it’s a higher following or more traffic to your website.
You can stay consistent by creating your social media calendar a month in advance and set daily reminders to post at a specific time.
5. Getting ahead of the algorithm
The social media algorithm is constantly changing. For instance, when Instagram introduced Reels, accounts that posted Reels first had a triple-digit growth on their account, with some profiles reaching 1 million followers in just 3 months.
Keeping an eye on the changing algorithm and adapting to these changes instantly can reap benefits for you. There are 3 ways to do this:
- Keep an eye on what’s trending within the social media channel. Understand what kind of content and memes are being shared on a specific day or week and create relatable content based on these insights
- Be the first to test new features that are released. Social media platforms favor accounts that try new features first and boost their visibility.
- Subscribe to websites that share social media-related content and digital marketing magazines. Spend some time every day reading about what’s new on social.
6. Turning social media followers into leads
Now that you’ve built a following, you need to warm them up to buy from you. Turning social media followers into leads is tricky but with the right tools assisting you, it’s doable.
You can start by getting followers to engage with your content. Use interactive elements like polls, questionnaires, and reaction sliders to get audiences involved in your content. This way, your audience would be actively engaging with you and you’ll also be able to use this to understand their pain points.
For instance, if you sell products online, you can ask your followers what they would like to buy. Give them a behind-the-scenes look into your process, the colours you use, how you create your products. So, when you share a new collection, these followers would be more willing to buy from you.
Besides interactive content, just responding to comments from your followers goes a long way in how memorable you are to your audience. Your followers would feel like they are building an authentic connection with your brand and will continue to engage with you. They would then be more willing to listen when you share a product or service you are introducing, becoming your advocates in the process.
7. Diversified strategy for different platforms
Each social media platform is different and audiences engage with the content in different ways. You can’t share an image made for Instagram on Twitter and expect it to resonate with your audience. You need to adapt your strategy based on the platform you are sharing and the formats that the platform is best known for.
Adapting your strategy for your different social media platforms doesn’t have to be hard. For instance, if you use a spreadsheet to plan your social media content, you can first define what your post will speak about and outline the core message of your design copy and caption.
You can then fill in the copy and caption for the different channels. So, for instance, for Facebook and Instagram, you might have a longer caption and a set of carousel images. The same post on Twitter might be a thread with interactive polls to keep the audience hooked.
By approaching your social media strategy in such a branched-out manner, you can spend less time planning but still get your content right for the different platforms that you share on.
8. Using analytics to make informed decisions
Many social media managers create a calendar and a template for the different types of content they want to share and set it on autopilot. This is harmful, hindering your growth. You don’t have any idea whether the content type is performing well. You may be losing followers due to a specific type of post and you may not even realise it.
Set up a process to look at your analytics every week to understand which posts resonate with your audience more and figure out why. With this insight into your social media strategy, you can tweak your social media content to improve your performance and share value-driven content that helps you capture more followers and engage them better.
You can also do a monthly audit of your social media strategy, before creating your monthly social media calendar. With this audit, you can track what changes you made within the past four weeks and identify what has been working best. You can then use these learnings to create a social media calendar that engages audiences better.
Tackle your social media marketing challenges in 2021
With billions of users having access to you, social media is one of the easiest ways to acquire new customers and create opportunities for your business to earn more. Some of the most successful businesses have been able to validate their products and services and attract their first clients through social media. When done right, social media is sure to help you capture new audiences who would be willing to buy from you.