Not all social media marketing tactics are created equal. There are certain ways to maximize your ROI, while other ways may sabotage your efforts altogether.

Social Media Today notes a few actions that from social media marketers could hinder their ability to see campaign success.

For instance, let’s say you’ve developed a following on Facebook or Twitter because of the connections you’ve made on the site or through insightful updates and promotions—now that you’ve got people listening, what’s the next step to keep them engaged?

For one, don’t ignore them. After collecting followers and fans, don’t just sit back and hope to continue the growth you’ve accumulated—you need to continue to interact and build upon the relationships you’ve made.
One way to ensure you’re constantly interacting is to combine your physical efforts with social media automation tactics.

Business 2 Community explains some ways that social media and automation can integrate for better outcomes. Most notably, you can capture customer information that’s shared in social channels and add it to your contacts’ profiles. You can also consider “social sharing” features in email campaigns to encourage recipients to share content, embed social feeds or videos in landing pages, automatically track the contribution of social sites to website traffic, monitor conversations by prospects, automate postings, and adjust lead scoring to reflect social conversations.

By automating one or all of these considerations, you’re improving your data, and in turn, increases your ability to measure ROI. You also gain deeper information about your prospects and customers, see a more complete view about their digital behavior, and reach more buyers.

Another tactic to avoid, Social Media Today also says, is disregarding successful market trends. Don’t get in your own way by trying to think too far outside the box when there are already models in your niche that have been proven to work. Find strategies that others in your niche are using and try to replicate them with your own spin.

“Ignoring what is working for others in your niche could be detrimental to your financial health,” the news source states.

On the other hand, accepting the current limits of your industry will prevent you from standing out. Finding that balance between innovation and following what works is the sweet spot for social media marketing.