Online marketing is at its peak and every entrepreneur is turning towards social media to market their businesses. Today, everyone knows about the benefits of having social media for their business. But there are still few misconceptions about social media that are affecting the marketing efforts of a company negatively.

Here are 14 common misconceptions about social media you should be aware of:

1. You need to be everywhere: –

The more social media sites you are on, the more people you will reach. That is completely wrong! Reaching out to more people does not equal to reaching the ‘right’ people. Do your research first. Find out where your target audience are and choose only few (2-3 social platforms) to focus your attention to.

2. The more you post, the better: –

Yes, you might be excited to post 10 or 20 post a day for a week, and then after that, you may not even have to steam to continue doing that for a long time. Remember, consistency is the key when it comes to gaining votes from your people. Posting 4 or 5 posts per week throughout the whole year is more effective than posting 100s of posts for a month and doing nothing after that.

Make your posts valuable and do not post the same thing over and over again as that will obviously irritate you audience and can do worse for your brand.

Related article: 10 Signs You Should Invest In Social Media

3. You do NOT need a social media plan: –

Like all public relation strategy, it is very important to have a well-thought out plan in place. Simply creating Facebook fan page and posting 10 tweets a day is not going to help. You need to ask yourself how you will build a following. Who will be your target audience? What messages you will promote? Moving ahead without these questions answered is like jumping off the cliff without a parachute.

4. Social media is dying: –

Social media is here to stay, for a very long time. Though the organic reach may have become limited than before, that does not mean social media is dying. We have found that sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are one of the most successful networks for many small to medium business owners. These networks are a great way to personalize your brand as well as connect with your audience.

Related article: Why You Should NOT Buy Twitter Followers

Though Facebook shows “trending topics” in its news feed, it is still not that news-centric than Twitter, making it an excellent platform to connect with your audience and promote your brand in a more personal and community-focused way.

5. You should expect returns on investments (ROIs) immediately: –

Just like everything else in the world, you are not going to get immediate results with social media over night. It takes time to build a community organically on social media and see the results you have been dreaming. Just be patient and consistent on posting useful content and you should see results.

Related article: The Worst Advice We Have Ever about Social Media

6. Get ONLY followers and fan that will become your customers: –

Of course, quality is very important but you should also not underestimate the power of extensive social reach. Having more followers and fans can mean you can reach to “their” followers and fans as well. If they are industry experts themselves, your association with them brings their influence to you. In fact, your SEO will improve if they share your posts.

7. Social media marketing is free: –

Creating social media profiles are absolutely free of cost. However, you should place the monetary value on the valuable time you invest in developing the platform and forming and deploying your social media strategy. In order to deliver the highest possible results, your social media marketing has to be continuously shaped and re-shaped, which takes time, and you know that time is money.

8. Social media ROI is not measurable: –

Social media’s ROIs are measurable if you are very specific about your goals and if your data collection system works for you. Tracking visits on web pages, clicks on you posts, consumer’s buying behavior in the sales funnel – all these data tell you whether you will make money or not.

Related article: 15 Gorgeous Sets of Social Media Icons

9. You should not show your personality: –

Though you should publish useful content on social media targeted to your audience that does not mean that you should lose the voice of your brand. Do not be afraid of showing your audience the pictures of people working in your organization, or enjoying a weekend out together, or posting links to content that you find every interesting and worth sharing, even if it is not from your industry.

10. Social media can replace your website: –

Although you can easily post quick excerpts, news, and updates about your company and grab the e-mail addresses of your audience through social media, social media marketing will never replace your company website.

A company website offers tons of rich features that are both easy to use and deploy, such as a simple form to grab user’s email addresses, blogs posts that offers information in detail with links to other pages, and present your brand in a more personal way.

Social media should not be the only marketing strategy you must have for your business.

11. Social media is just Facebook: –

Several marketing gurus are of the view that because Facebook is the most popular social media site, therefore, it is enough to be on this single social media to promote their business. This is a grand hoax of all time. If you were running a business-to-business organization, you would get more benefits from LinkedIn.

If you want to create a targeted group of followers, being active on Twitter will give you the highest ROIs. Pinterest is highly effective in driving social commerce. On Facebook, these tasks are slow and very expensive to build.

Related article: Top 10 Most Popular Social Media Sites for June 2015

12. You must think about engagement: –

Conversations are very important in order to get the conversation going between you and your followers and fans. It is engaging. But, certainly it is not the end of the social media marketing.

In fact, sharing valuable content is also important aspect of social media strategy, which is more important than having an engaging conversation. Although quality content may not always encourage conversation, but it will definitely generate high quality leads.

13. Buying friends will grow your audience: –

This is another hoax that affects your marketing efforts. Advertising frauds often claim to grow your media fans overnight; however, you know they are not your real fans. In fact, these scammers use low quality fake profiles, and you end up having a bunch of ghosts that do not respond when you want them to.

Related article: Why You Should NOT buy Twitter Followers

14. Social media is only for driving traffic and not for conversion: –

Some marketers believe that social media is only good for driving traffic to your site and not great for generating leads and conversion. This concept is false! Your contacts on social media help you collect data about your leads. You get to know them through their social network profiles and interactions, which helps in your social media strategy.

Did we miss anything? Have you heard of any misconceptions?

Please share them in the comment box below!