Top 5 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid as an Apparel Decorator

Building a brand identity on social media is a great idea for almost any company, but it can have its pitfalls. Here are five mistakes to avoid when using social media on behalf of your company.

1. Being where your audience is not: It sounds like a no brainer,  but a lot of companies neglect to figure out who their target audience is, much less what social media platforms they might be using.  Remember, you can have the best message and the coolest profile in the world, but if you’re speaking to people who don’t want what you have to sell, the message and the cool factor don’t matter. You need to talk to the people who want your goods or services, and that means being on the platforms they use.
2. Your whole profile is “buy my stuff”: No one likes to be blatantly sold to on a regular basis. If your profile is merely post after post that showcases for sale items and nothing else, you’re probably more likely to turn people off than to make a sale. The same thing goes for dumping a whole list of sale posts at one time. No one needs to see 45 different versions of the same basic shirt.
3. Tumbleweeds are rolling through your profile: All social media profiles are exciting to their owners when they’re new. The problem happens when the days and weeks go on, and the account is slowly picking up followers, or not getting any followers at all, and the interest in updating the profile wanes. If people visit your company’s accounts and the last post was months ago, you definitely won’t pick up new followers, and you’ll be missing out on a valuable opportunity to connect with your customers.
4. Not using Pinterest: Pinterest is an apparel decorator’s Nirvana, a place where you can show your work, educate customers, and give those customers the ability to literally “put a pin” in an idea of yours until they’re ready to purchase. Setting up boards isn’t hard, and Pinterest has some great business tools which allow board owners to understand their customers better while also providing data on pin success and popularity. It’s definitely worth the time.
5. Not following strategically: One of the ongoing myths of social media is that more equals better. Even the platforms themselves will tell you that loading up on followers is the way to go, but that’s not true. It isn’t the number of followers or fans or friends that matters; it’s the quality. Remember, carefully selecting who you follow will influence the quality of those who follow your account. Resist the urge to ask people who aren’t in your target market to follow you, and be strategic in deciding who you follow. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if you have 1,000,000 likes if 999,997 of them don’t care about what you have to offer.

Get the 411 on how to handle your social media accounts in this video.