Social Media Mistakes to Avoid
Used in the right way social media can greatly benefit your business, but if it’s used incorrectly it can have a negative impact on your business. Social media is growing in importance and so a small error can set your brand’s reputation back for a long time. Of course it is only natural to make the odd mistake, but here are some tips on how to avoid the most serious ones:
- No strategy — without a strategy you could have brilliant content but might only be seen by a limited number of people. You need a clear strategy with measurable goals, a content calendar and a social media policy. You need to have a clear strategy on how to respond to positive and negative feedback.
- Giving the wrong people access — the purpose of social media is to share your voice and obviously if you outsource your social media activity you can’t do that. However, you can’t be online on social media all day so it is fine to outsource, but ensure you find the most qualified person/agency for the job and work together on strategy and try to add some updates yourself to keep it ‘personal’.
- Being non-responsive — this is a very common mistake. Businesses often end up spamming their followers, albeit unintentionally, but this is the outcome if you share content or statuses too frequently, and repeatedly sending the same message can create ill will from consumers. Consumers expect a certain amount of responsiveness from a business on social media, whereas businesses often end up using social media as one-way communication. Comments and replies deserve a reply, at the very least a thank you, social media is after all about being social, i.e. interactive!
- Not using images — Images on tweets use more space on newsfeeds and help to drive engagement; they have double the engagement of tweets without images. Although not every tweet warrants an image, try to use them wherever and whenever possible, though obviously the images need to be relevant to the tweet and/or your business; although people like looking at pictures of fluffy kittens, you can’t justify tweeting or posting pictures of kittens unless of course you’re a kitten-related business!
- Inconsistency — your tone of voice should not be too robotic nor too friendly, you want to show your brand has ‘personality’ but at the same time you need to remain professional. Don’t get too personal or share opinions on sensitive topics, such as religion and politics, and certainly don’t get into any sort of argument.
- Unoriginal content — If you want to earn the respect of others in the industry, you need to produce good quality, interesting and original content. This probably goes without saying but it is surprising how much unoriginal and uninteresting content there is out there!
- Not using social media management tools — it is helpful and ok to use these as you can’t be on social media all day. However, don’t automate all your updates; followers will quickly decipher that you’re not taking the time to actually engage with them.
- Not tracking activity — there are various tools, such as Google Analytics, to monitor your campaign and to tell you if your updates are reaching the right people and if your efforts have been effective in driving traffic. Unless you track activity you won’t know if your social media efforts are having the right effect, and tracking will enable you to see if any changes you make are the right ones.
These are commonly made mistakes that you should watch out for and ensure you avoid if you want to benefit from social media, which has become an essential part of business marketing in recent years.
