5 Common Digital Marketing Misconceptions
The digital marketing landscape is one fraught with misconceptions. This makes it a particularly tricky terrain to navigate, especially since it is ever-changing. If you’re operating under misconceptions, then you’re wasting valuable resources. Acknowledging some of these misconceptions, and understanding the truth behind them, is a really simple way to make your digital marketing efforts much more effective.
1. Understanding hashtags
The biggest misconception surrounding hashtags is that there’s not much to ‘em. People tend to assume that hashtags are just a simple and easy add on that don’t require any deeper understanding. The truth is that hashtag strategy is very complex and the deeper your understanding of it, the better results you’ll see. Hashtags are one of the best ways to get in front of your target audience, so it's well worth understanding how to leverage them. Here’s some basic info that can help guide your hashtag strategy.
First of all, if your account is not public, there’s really no point in using hashtags because they won’t be seen by non-followers. Really the purpose of hashtags is to help people, who are interested in those specific hashtags, discover your content when they might not otherwise come across it. The end goal here is to boost engagement and exposure. In fact, “a post with at least one Instagram hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag”
It’s good to use a combination of long-tail and short-tail hashtags, so that you’re targeting highly specific and relevant audiences, as well as the more broad, widely searched terms. This hybrid strategy allows you to capitalize on the best benefits of both. Using too many short, popular hashtags can translate to vanity metrics, which we’ll get to later.
It’s also good to use a blend of trending and evergreen hashtags, so that your content will hit both of those markets. Ritetag is a great platform for discovering trending hashtags. Another effective way is to look at what hashtags you see on your feed and on accounts similar to yours.
Hashtags are not considered by the Instagram algorithm if they are added after a post has been published, unless added in the comments (which must be done immediately to count).
There is no apparent preference between hashtags in line, below the copy, or in the comments, so it’s just a matter of personal preference.
The maximum number of hashtags allowed on Instagram is 30, but some people can find this to be “spammy.” However, studies show that using the maximum does generate the highest levels of engagement. That being said, there are mixed feelings about this in the industry, and ultimately you should do what makes most sense for your brand based on the performance metrics.
2. Vanity metrics
Vanity metrics is a term used to refer to traffic/engagement that isn’t actually beneficial to your end goal, and makes it hard to effectively inform future strategy. Many people think “like for like” and “follow for follow” is a good way to gain traction on social media platforms, but it’s actually empty data. Quick likes may look good on paper, but they don’t actually translate to a quality following. Quality over quantity is key. If you want people to buy your product or service, you want your followers to be genuinely engaged. This is why the quick likes you may get from a bunch of short-tail hashtags should be limited. It may feel good to get a lot of likes, but the truth is, if they’re not genuine, they don’t really count towards much. In fact, they can be counter productive by making it hard to accurately measure brand awareness, and difficult to decipher which efforts are working well and which are not. This is why it’s so important to build an authentic audience, built for long-term success. This way, you can measure your metrics with confidence in knowing the data is meaningful and will actually help optimize your social media marketing efforts.
3. The value of email marketing
You may think email marketing is dead, or on it's way out, but that’s far from the truth. Surprisingly enough, email marketing is actually the most effective kind of digital marketing. Believe it or not, email marketing has the highest ROI, with an average of $41 back on every $1 spent. That’s an ROI of a whopping 4,100%! This is the most cost effective and conversion-heavy marketing platform out there. Email marketing is a great way to convert leads into sales because of the ongoing nature. When emails are repeatedly and consistently being delivered to your leads’ inbox, their awareness and trust of your brand is likely to increase. It has also been demonstrated that “consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than those that don't receive email offers.”
4. & 5. intentional & consistent content
As previously mentioned, quality is so much more important than quantity. Many people believe that in order to be favored by the algorithms, you must post at least once a day. This results in sloppy, hollow content, which nobody wants to see on their feed. The real secret is posting meaningful, authentic content. The catch is not quantity, but consistency. If you’re posting on a regular basis, say twice a week, you should be in good shape. That is, as long as your content is intentionally crafted for your target audience. This again ties back into vanity metrics, because if your content is inauthentic, and striving only to be seen and liked, then it serves no one. Do yourself and your followers a favor, and be considerate of what you’re putting out there, and why. Consistency is critical too because this keeps you in the forefront of your audience’s mind. It trains their subconscious to be aware of your reliability and trustworthiness. If you often go dark for weeks at a time, you could easily become irrelevant. But you could also become irrelevant (and annoying) if you’re posting meaningless content just for the sake of posting, so it’s a fine line. This line is best walked with intentionality and consistency.
