Yes. The header is completely inspired by the Chetan Bhagat book. Anyway,

Over the time of working with brands & actually binge watching all the content there is, we  decided to gather our thoughts this afternoon and write down some blunders we’ve seen, so YOU can do better. 

Lets dive straight into the conversation, 

A very stupidly popular thing people do is ‘BUY’ followers for their newly made social media page thinking it increases their credibility. Seriously, buy chocolates and burgers, not FOLLOWERS. Here’s explaining why a little more technically –

We all know that buying followers is against the guidelines of all social media networks. But when fewer and fewer people follow your business page over time, this illicit activity becomes more and more tempting. After all, how can you pass on getting a thousand followers for a few hundred bucks?! Right?

This offer only sounds good. In fact, you may be paying for your social media page to become a failure. How can that be? Because buying followers goes against the Facebook and Instagram algorithm. Whenever you make a post, it is shown in the feed of a few select members of your audience. The more people like and comment on it, the more the algorithm thinks it’s a good post. It will continue showing it to other subscribers. *Boom – that’s engagement* Now, imagine that you originally had 500 followers and paid to get 1000 more. Now, two-thirds of your audience are accounts with thousands of subscriptions. They aren’t interested in your posts and won’t like them even if they bother checking their feed.

Once, there were so many fake profiles made for selling followers on Facebook, that even official ads resulted in fake likes. These fake accounts prevent posts from getting promoted by the algorithm. The result is your original subscribers will see fewer of your posts. This is definitely not something you had in mind when you were paying for followers. Keep in mind that you’re not chasing the subscriber count, you’re chasing conversions. And buying followers only takes you leads from that goal.

Simply put, followers nahi, engagement ke peeche bhaago, followers jhak maar ke peeche aayenge! 

Here’s another mistake brands usually make – they forget to or more realistically don’t put in effort in their online response management especially with the comment section of the posts made by them, essentially – don’t be Khamosh! 

One of the best ways to make the Instagram algorithm like you is to boost the engagement rates by having a lot of comments on your posts. The same is true about Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and all other social media platforms. 

Leaving comments doesn’t only appeal to the algorithm, it establishes connections with your followers. When they see you care enough to respond to their comments, they’ll like your brand more. Also, You probably have seen a couple of brands that get a negative comment, engage in a lengthy and ugly conversation, and then delete the whole thread.

This is the most unauthentic thing you can do. You have to show your audience that you have nothing to hide and be objective when you do get a negative comment.

If the person commenting highlights your wrongdoing, thank them for the advice and improve. If they’re just being toxic, ignore them *well, that’s just life advice*

Moving on, an infamous mistake is to measure the performance basis of the numbers! Like we wanted to tell our math teachers – Numbers Don’t Matter!
We mean, the number of followers don’t!
When measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) for your social media marketing, many brands fall into the trap of vanity metrics. They measure the number of fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter, Instagram or YouTube, and if these numbers are growing, they are happy. Social media marketing is no different from any other marketing channel. You should be measuring the impact your social media efforts have on your business, not your total number of fans or followers. Increase in the number of followers is a byproduct, but the growth in the number of accounts engaged with your content is what you should be looking for. They might or might not follow you – but if they like your content, they surely have created a small memory of your brand in their mind and it will invoke when they need the product you sell! 

Hope this gyaan really helps you! See on the ‘gram!