10 things I hate about our social media tips
Published:
This title is slightly misleading. I don’t really hate them, they’re more pet peeves or things that could be done better. Anyway. Social plays a bit part in today’s marketing. There are 1.65 billion active mobile social accounts globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day. Which means that if you’re going to do it, you should do it well.
But as there are lots of little things that get overlooked. here are our social media tips of what to avoid. And by ensuring you’re not making these common mistakes, you’ll set yourself apart from the novice’s and be more of a know-it-all.
Check it:
Social Media Tips
Links with no description/images
Why? Why would you do this? It’s the equivalent of walking into someone’s room, announcing something with no context and expecting them to praise it. It doesn’t work like that. You need to express an opinion on why you liked this article/infographic/whatever it is, and why it’s worth your follower’s time. People react positively to enthusiasm. Which is why you should only share content that you would get excited about, or find useful, yourself.
No personality
This ties in nicely with that point up there ^^, nobody wants to talk to a robot. Well, they do, but only when it’s actually a robot. If it’s a person that’s monotonous, that’s gonna lose followers. You want to get across your personality in your posts. What do you care about? What do you like? What’s your culture about? People don’t just buy products anymore. They buy into aspirations, or, they want to believe they’re buying better versions of themselves. And if your values resonate with theirs, you’ll build a strong online community.
Keep your brand consistent!
Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. So it’s worth spending some time creating imagery to accompany your links to content. But if you’re going to start designing, then you’ll want to make sure it’s on brand (en brand? I don’t know). Otherwise, how will people know the shared content is from you? Make sure you get yourself some brand guidelines so you’re constantly consistent, then start creating pics that will stand out in user’s feeds and start increasing your brand awareness.
Not giving credit where it’s due
Not cool, man. This is an another good reason for branding your content. It would be very annoying if you started sending your images out there and, because they could be from anyone, others were able to use them and pass them off as their own. This doesn’t mean exclusively using your own images though. No no. It’s always cool to share 3rd party content, and in fact, it should be encouraged to ensure you’re getting enough variety in your posts. However, not giving props to the right people is a jerk move. Make sure you tag away.
Auto DM’s
It’s not real! These messages come across as inauthentic, spammy and bot-like. Instead, take the time to try and engage with your new followers with your content. Check through their feed and like the odd post that ties in with what you’re about. Maybe schedule a #throwback post with an old article for new followers who would’ve missed it. Give your posts a bit of thought instead of relying on the method which gets ignored by every follower that receives it and you’ll see a lot more engagement.
#’s that don’t do anything
Ya know, like on LinkedIn or Pinterest or any other platform that doesn’t support them! They’ve been around for years now everyone, we should know when or where they’re wanted and when or when they’re not. This usually happens when users autoshare to other platforms without considering the content already included in the original post. Which is understandable, I suppose. But it doesn’t take 2 seconds to check. And as social is integrated so much into marketing these days, it highlights your less-than-guru-status. Which ain’t no good.
Ignoring bad comments
This will inevitably happen to you at some point. You can’t please everyone and people love to speak out online. That’s why social is so great, it gives you the option to connect on a more personal level. Whenever a brand receives negative feedback it’s only seen as a real negative if badly handled (it can go from a slight mishap to a freaking disaster). Mistakes always happen and a complaint on social is no different to a complaint about email or the phone. As long as you’re polite and trying to help the customer, that will instill trust from readers that you’re a company that pays attention and is willing to resolve issues.
Offering no value
This one’s a biggie for me, so listen up; not everyone cares about your product or service as much as you do. Which means that nobody is gonna follow an account that only wants to talk about themselves. We all know someone who does that in real life, right? Does anyone like that person? Nah. Who do we like to talk to? We like the people who tell interesting, funny stories. Stories where we learn something. It’s definitely OK to shout about you every so often – that’s what you’re there for right? But there are other ways to get your product’s point across without having to sound like your own personal advertising channel. Remember that when writing your posts for social.
All schedule and no engagement
Content scheduling tools have meant it’s a million times easier to manage your social channels and you’re now able to make sure your feeds are regularly populated. However, just because you’ve got your content locked and loaded, that doesn’t mean you can fully push social to the back of your mind. One of our social media tips is to make sure you check back in with your profiles for any engagement – as nobody likes being ignored. And you could be losing out on the chance to get some good engagement with your online community.
Not knowing the difference between your platforms
There’s a reason why there are so many different social profiles, they’re not one and the same. Posts have different life spans depending on which platform you’re using and each platform has its own tone. Although you don’t want to change yours totally to adapt to each of them, your brand still needs to sound consistent. As long as you know how LinkedIn is used differently to Instagram, you’ll be grand. Just think; is it a microblogging site or is it social networking? Blogging or photo sharing? By understanding these and understanding what users are on there for you’ll ensure you’re getting the most out of your reach and won’t come across as a social spammer.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post on social media tips, if you’re interested in learning more about Signable you can take our free 14 day trial today.