4 Social Media Mistakes Every Tech Consultant Should Avoid
One of the easiest ways to fail at something is to simply not try. Just ask my high school math teacher — she’ll gladly prove my case.
In terms of social media, most businesses fail by putting as much effort into their strategy as 16-year-old me put into learning trigonometry: Not much.
This remains especially true when it comes to social media strategy for tech consultants, despite the fact that tons of data shows tech buyers are extremely active and engaged on platforms like LinkedIn. Your buyers are on social channels researching, shopping, and longing to connect with people who can help them solve their problems. But where are you?
Studies show that around 75% of buyers choose one of the first three brands that come to their mind when making a purchase.
Tech consultants who read stats like this respond in one of two ways:
Group A: “We better get some content out that puts us top of mind!”
Group B: “Sounds nice, but what we need right now are sales, not brand awareness.”
If you’re in group B, you can stop reading now. We wish you all the best, but this article isn’t what you’re looking for.
If you’re in group A, you’ll be happy to learn that social media is one of the best and cheapest ways to get your brand into the hearts and minds of your market.
Of course, it’s not enough just to say you’ll put out more content on your social channels. There’s a right and a wrong way to do social, and a strategy for not only the quantity and quality of the content you produce but the context in which you deliver it.
There are a million articles that will tell you how to create a winning social media strategy. But I’m here to tell you four things not to do with social media content that will help keep your strategy on the right path.
4 common social media mistakes
Make your organic social posts all about your offerings or solutions instead of helping your market by giving valuable insights and information.
Try to sound super technical and smart in all your content. Use a lot of complicated jargon and tech-speak about how you help “seamlessly leverage automation to optimize operations for data-driven results”. You’ll either confuse your readers greatly or sound like everyone else in the tech space.
Save money by hiring or delegating your content creation to a trendy contract agency that knows nothing about your market or industry. Give them the reins on your content, and watch your engagement slowly die.
Do the bare minimum. Post just for the sake of posting and tell your audience only what you want them to know rather than seizing the opportunity to provide free, valuable insights and resources to help solve prospects’ problems and stay top-of-mind.
Failure is part of the process. You won’t get every part of your social media strategy right the first time, and it will require a lot of learning and iterating as you go. But the best way to never succeed is to never try. And the best way to progress is to learn from those who’ve tried and failed before you (by using the strategies above).
In the words of Thomas Edison:
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
Hopefully, we’ve given you a head start on Edison by sharing four ways that won’t work here. But if you’re looking for more advice on failures to avoid (we’ve heard a lot of horror stories from our clients before they came to Forrest), I’d be happy to hop on a call and help walk you through what our team at Forrest has seen work in social media content for tech consultants.
Until then, cheers to failure and moving forward!
