Social media is here to stay. It has completely transformed the landscape of personal and brand communication.

Yet one of the biggest impacts on social media strategy thus far was recently released in a new study from Econsultancy. The reason marketers are using social media is changing — and the new findings are detrimental to your long-term success on social media.

Read on to discover the top way to ensure your social media strategy will fail — and how to avoid it. Create a social media strategy that succeeds and shines with these tips.

The ROI of social media

Marketers are investing a lot of time in creating and implementing a social media strategy — and for good reason. Social media is by far the best place to connect and engage with your consumer. Plus, in Social Media Examiner's 2013 Industry report, they found 86 percent of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business, up from 83 percent in 2012.

To continually invest time, energy and tactics into your social strategy, there has to be a proven ROI on your social media. But 2 in 3 marketers don't really know if their Facebook strategy is effective.

During this upcoming year, social media marketers are really trying to hone in on what makes social media have the most impact — and the biggest effect on the bottom line.

The top way to ensure your social media strategy will fail

In an attempt to really push and affect the ROI of social media, marketers are making a fatal mistake that's guaranteed to destroy their social media strategy while causing a massive amount of lost followers and likes.

So what is the biggest mistake social media marketers are making?

They're focusing on lead generation and online sales as their primary objective for using social media. While this certainly is the end goal, the main purpose of social media is not to sell.

Ecoconsultancy/Adobe

Social media is about building your brand and engaging your consumers by being personable and available. With this new objective in the forefront of marketers' minds across the country, you'll be seeing your news feed clogged with sales pitches. You'll be bombarded by social media pages trying to push products.

But we cannot forget that social media plans arose as a new exciting medium to connect with consumers since advertising dollars weren't as well spent as they used to be.

What social media followers really want

Social media users don't want advertisements masquerading as social media posts. They want stories. They want to be inspired. They want to feel compelled to act — not told.

Sales cannot come before brand building.

Instead, when you tell a poignant story and provide your followers with content and posts that truly engage them, they'll fall in love with your brand. This genuine engagement is what will actually convert the most leads.

Don't make social media the next failed realm of brand communications.

Be smart, act human and let your passion for your product and industry drive content on social media to succeed.