The single biggest mistake is treating social media like a popularity contest instead of a business driver. It’s so easy to fall for the trap of chasing follower counts and likes. These are vanity metrics that feel good, but they don’t pay the bills. Alex Hormozi keeps coming back to this on The Game with Alex Hormozi, making the point that spending dozens of hours a month on content just to gain a few hundred followers and no new sales is a terrible trade. The cost is huge, not just in wasted time but in opportunity cost. The fix is to get ruthless about measuring the real return on investment for your social efforts. You have to connect your activity to actual customer acquisition or revenue to know if it's working.
Another common mistake is creating bland, safe, and forgettable content. Brands often do this because they're afraid to be weird or they're just mimicking what larger, more corporate companies do. The result is that you become completely invisible. What I’ve heard over and over is that unusual, authentic content is what actually works. Joel Twyman of TheMarshmallow.co talked on the DTC Podcast about getting 100 million views by slapping marshmallows. It was bizarre and unique, and it worked. On Shopify Masters, Charlotte Palermino emphasized brand authenticity, and on Honest Ecommerce, Krystal Hughes talked about how self-expression attracts the right customers. The fix isn't to be weird for the sake of it, but to find your own unique voice and stop trying to be everything to everyone.
Then there's the tendency to treat social media as a billboard rather than a conversation. This happens when businesses just broadcast promotions and announcements without ever interacting with their audience. They post and ghost. The cost here is that you never develop any real connection or loyalty. You end up with an audience that doesn't care, and you’re missing the entire point of the “social” part of social media. The fix is to dedicate time to actually building a real community. Respond to comments, answer DMs, and ask questions. As the hosts of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast discussed when talking about building a community, it’s about fostering a sense of belonging where your customers feel seen and heard.
Finally, a classic time-saving trap is creating one piece of content and blasting it across every single platform. It seems efficient, but the reality is that content that works on TikTok is totally different from what works on Instagram, which is different from Facebook. Each platform has its own culture and algorithm. When you cross-post generic content everywhere, it doesn't feel native to any of them, so it underperforms everywhere. Marcus Milione’s success with TikTok, which he broke down on Shopify Masters, came from deeply understanding that one platform and creating for its specific audience and trends. The fix is to choose one or two platforms where your customers truly are and go deep on creating content that feels right at home there.
Good social media feels less like marketing and more like building genuine relationships with people who love what you do.