1. Buying Followers

Yes, its tempting when you see other people with 10k, 20k or even  hundreds of thousands of followers … and know that many of these have simply been bought. It can take a long time to grow to these kinds of numbers organically so why not just do what they’ve done?

Purchasing followers or paying for their engagement backfires in the long run. The followers you buy are usually bots and when these make up most of your likes, you are preventing real humans .. you future clients …from seeing your posts about your products or services.

Grow by posting regular, engaging content that adds value and over time you will attract followers who are actually interested in what you have to say and offer. Yes, it will take longer but it will reap the benefits!

2. The Follow and Unfollow Game

Ultimately,  if you aren’t genuinely interested in a person’s content, and you don’t want to be an active member of their community, then don’t follow them. Saves you a lot of time and frustration.

Ultimately,  if you aren’t genuinely interested in a person’s content, and you don’t want to be an active member of their community, then don’t follow them. Saves you a lot of time and frustration.

3. Creating the ‘Perfect’ Feed

I know, I know! Instagram can be sooo pretty! In the early days, I spent a LOT of time creating my perfect feed. Carefully selecting the images to ensure my account was scroll-worthy!  I look back now and sigh at all the time I wasted and wish I knew better.

Likes don’t always – in fact rarely – convert to sales! Instead of wasting a lot of time on the images in your feed, it is far more important to post quality content that adds value or solves a problem.  You can still have a visually attractive grid but it’s the content that matters.

By all means have a flow or format you follow that you’re happy with, but once you’ve got one, don’t waste a lot of time on making it ‘perfect’ at the expense of your copy.

Serve and add value … The rest won’t matter!

4. Sharing Only Sales Posts

Real talk: The key to selling on social media is developing a relationship with your ideal client. They need to know, like, and trust you far before they share their credit card information! Create posts that allow you to talk about your business in a natural and conversational way.

5. Not Replying To Comments

The ultimate goal of every post should be to get your audience engaged and better still … talking back to you in the comments section. When followers take the time out of their day to comment on your content, do not ignore that effort and always make time to respond to each and every comment. Not only is it simply the polite thing to do, it will also show your followers that you appreciate their time and effort and value their comments!

I hope these tips help! It’s tempting to get caught up in these traps but when building a long term brand, it’s always better to do it the right way! Shortcuts usually have short term benefits.

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