Social media is expanding in every possible direction. It is no more a tool for connecting with school friends and old mates. Its charisma is attracting the youth, professionals, social workers, and old aged equally to have a social circle, share images and opinion, and get engaged. In fact, masses are now active on social media networks, and it is where businesses step in to have their share of profit.

Dubai is the fastest-growing economy for having a pool of investors and talent around the globe. Promoting a Dubai-based business on social media platforms can be a bit difficult as the majority of the users are seeking for entertainment. It requires planning a sensible marketing strategy that is an amalgamation of glamor and promotion.

We all make mistakes in drafting a plan and implementing it as a social media campaign. Every mistake has a cost plus a benefit of learning. But, in Dubai, the cost of a mistake may mean losing a potential customer. So, one has to be careful in avoiding mistakes while planning an online social media campaign. In this post, we will reveal some of the devastating mistakes you must avoid rather than rectify them later. Save your time and efforts by starting with accurately laying the foundation stone of your social media marketing.

10 Things to Avoid While Planning an Online Social Media Campaign for a Dubai Based Business

1. Not Narrowing Down Target Audience

Every social media campaign starts with targeting a concerned community that shares a common interest, region, language, or gender. Planning a promotional campaign starts with narrowing down the audience. Determine the people you want to serve and for whom you have brought a solution in terms of your products or service. Know the principle of cause and effect and apply it to your brands. It will help you highlight the purpose and benefit of your products to the audience. Dubai is a very dynamic market but still, there are some niches that are more lucrative than others i.e. traveling, tourism, and startup businesses. It will be a bit easy to target these niche as there will be plenty of audiences.

2. Not Utilizing Social Media Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing means utilizing any famous person on social media having a great number of fans to promote your brand and image. In 2018, snap chat lost almost $1.3 Billion just because of a single negative tweet by Kylie Jenner. This just shows the importance of a social media influencer. Search for more social media influencer form Dubai and ask them to mention your product or brand. Make sure the social media celebrity you choose reflects your business model i.e. if your product is fitness based then go and find some fitness trainer for promotion. Keep in mind that these people can ask you quite a good amount of money for a single post but at the end of the day, it is worth it.

You might like to read: Top Social Media Influencers From Dubai, UAE 

3. Using Free Blogging Platforms

The thing that is synonymous with Dubai is “Brand”. Having your own exclusive brand image is the key to success. Now if you want to be recognized as a brand you need to think and act like a brand. Having a blog on one of the free blogging platforms such as Blogger, WordPress, Wix, or Tumblr is a common mistake that brands never commit. This does not count towards your digital assets because the platform operators can take down your blog whenever they need to. So, set up a blog right on your business website as it becomes a part of your virtual property. Sharing anything right on a self-hosted blog helps recognize your business a brand and build your authority in the niche.

4. Having Limited Social Media Accounts

One of the most crucial mistakes that is made by many beginners is that they don’t cover all their bases. What this means is having social media accounts on just one or two platforms. As more and more social media platforms are coming every day, you need to have accounts on all of them as you might not know when one of your followers start to use a new and exciting platform and never goes back. It might be a bit time consuming at first when you need to set up accounts but after that, you can just post the same stories on all of them. The most widely used platforms that you need to look at are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Keep in mind that each of these platforms is different from others so make sure you use each of them in their own way.

5. Utilizing Social Networks More Than Necessary

Social networks provide a way to connect with friends and family and make new friends. The users stick to a network where they find like-minded people. A social media strategy needs to utilize the networks that are relevant and effective for the specific needs of a business. A business-to-business model company has to limit its promotions to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Spending time on image-focused platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat may prove useless for such business models.

6. Ignoring Your Social Media Mentions

Social media users like to discuss different products and services with their loved ones. They may be referring or praising your products to their social circles. You are missing out on an exclusive success evaluation factor if you are ignoring the social media mentions.

A number of people neither tag your profile nor share a link with their friends, but they do mention your brand in a text which is worthy to be counted. You can take help from applications like Mention, FollowerWonk, and Twitonomy. Monitor your success through these innovative tools to receive real-time statistics without keenly observing the increase and decrease in likes, and tweet reach.

7. Not Utilizing the Power Of Hashtags

The use of hashtags in social media is as compulsory as adding a keyword to your sales copy. Sharing a post on your Facebook profile may reach just to the people who like or follow your page, but the use of hashtag assures your post reach a massive number of audiences.

The social media networks are now playing an innovative role in a search engine. Users tend to search for their favorite products, services, and brands right on the network they commonly use. Grab their attention by showing up in social media search results with the power of hashtags.

You might like to read: Great Tools to Master Your Social Media Game

8. Not Creating A Visual Context

Visual context facilitates the delivery of a message through relevant images and videos. Social media is majorly focused on visuals. The users are comfortable to quickly go through an image or infographic, or watch a video rather than reading a whole paragraph of text.

A captivating image attracts user attention, but when combined with a powerful message, it creates a visual context. This helps the users quickly understand the purpose, aim, and goal of your business. You are committing a great sin if not incorporating relevant visuals to your social media campaigns.

9. Using An Exclusively Marketing Pitch

Users signup to a social media network to seek entertainment and spend quality time with friends, and meet new ones. Reaching them with a strong marketing pitch will harm your business instead of benefitting it. The core principle of social media marketing is to deliver high-quality content more and promote products less. It follows the same 80-20 rule of marketing that is used by bloggers across the globe. It is 80% creation of valuable and useful content for your audience while keeping the marketing pitch to a maximum of 20%.

10. Not Measuring the Campaign Outcome

Social media campaigns are carried to capture leads and conversions. If you are running an online store, you may want your social followers to click through a product you share, land on your website, and proceed to the checkout page. This is the outcome of all your social media marketing efforts. If you are not measuring these results, you may not deduce a success line.

For example, a fitness blogger may either want his fans to purchase products, sign-up for coaching sessions, or at least subscribe to email updates. If he is unable to know how many users are converting via social media campaigns, he may not be able to know the effective medium of grabbing customers. Tools such as Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics can help you analyze the success of your Facebook and Twitter campaigns respectively.

Final Thoughts

With a recent surge of social media in Dubai, most of the businesses find it easier to promote a product or service. They find it less competitive but are still unable to gain the required rate of return because they are not doing it properly. It may start with selecting business-specific social networks, narrowing down the target audience, monitoring mentions, and focusing on the creation of valuable content. You can succeed by averting the alarming mistakes that are described above in this post. If you need professional help in crafting an outstanding social media marketing strategy, feel free to contact us. Being one of the leading digital marketing and web development company from UAE, We have created many successful marketing campaigns for our valuable customers.