It’s social media; Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. It isn’t that hard, and social media management should not a part of the marketing process that takes a prolonged period of time.

Wrong.

Social media has grown exponentially over the last decade, but in the last two years through the Covid-19 pandemic, we were limited to connecting online more than ever before. It’s our job as marketers to step up to the plate during this social media surge and use these platforms to engage and connect with potential consumers.

While most people have a general understanding of how social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram work, there is a different mindset when it come to your business pages. As an outdoor lifestyle brand, you benefited from the fact that that during lockdown, and right now, everyone is using their outdoor spaces, and your once niche market opened and grew exponentially. You probably had a large surge in sales during Covid, and now that things are starting to get back to normal, you need to be aggressively using your social media to get your name out there. Social media management is more important now than ever before.

Here are 5 mistakes that you need to avoid:

1. Not Having a Defined Social Media Marketing Plan

It’s easy enough to take the photo, type up a short caption, throw some hashtags in, and hit post. This means using a social media management tool, such as eClincher or HeyOrca, to plan out your social media calendars for the month. This will give you the opportunity to see your social media calendar as a whole, and to make sure it flows and is sending a clear, concise, and consistent message. The hard part is setting a clear outline of objectives and strategizing what you are hoping to achieve. Use your SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time bound), to create a focused social media marketing plan. For example, you could say you want to boost the number of Instagram followers by 8% by Q3.

2. Posting Infrequently

You should be posting on your social channels anywhere from 3-5 days per week as an outdoor lifestyle brand, ESPECIALLY during the summer! It is important to find the balance between not posting enough and posting too much. You never want to come off as annoying, but if you are only posting once a week, your followers will not remember your brand and will inevitably think of your competitor for their backyard project, rather than you.

3. Not Having Appropriate Photos That Coincide With Your Brand

As an outdoor lifestyle brand, you have the opportunity to draw in customers based on photos of prior projects and work you have done. It’s all about getting the photo that makes your potential customer picture your work at their home. The beautiful brand-new pool chairs out by the crystal-clear pool, the brand-new grill with burgers and hot dogs cooking, the stonework leading up to a beautiful house at sunset…the details that draw people in.

4. Not Knowing Your Audience

This is one of the most popular mistakes that outdoor lifestyle brands make in their social media marketing plan. It is not enough to organically be putting content up on social media. Boosting your posts to target your direct audience is where you will see huge results. As an outdoor lifestyle brand, you not only need to consider age, location, and gender, but also average income. If you are an outdoor paving company that typically does bigger jobs on bigger homes in more affluent areas, it would not make sense for you to be throwing money into a campaign aimed at consumers who could not afford your work. Doing the research into finding areas where the average income is over a certain amount puts your company right in the hands of the consumer you are looking for when targeting your ads.

5. Not Being Authentic

When people are looking to buy outdoor furniture, a grill, pave their driveway, or even build a custom structure/fence/pergola, they are letting you into their lives, into their homes. It is important to remember that while this is a business page on social media, there are real people and families working behind the scenes to make the ship sail smoothly. Throwing in a photo of your company team, or a holiday post, or even snagging a picture of your workers on the job shows your customers that they are working with real, authentic people.

Social media management can seem like a small part of marketing, but outdoor lifestyle brands need to take advantage of the reach social media can have. Avoiding these 5 social media mistakes can help your social media marketing plan thrive. If you have any questions about social media marketing for an outdoor lifestyle brand, feel free to reach out to us.