- August 13, 2015
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How Not To Be Social
Old-school companies seem to forget that social networks are all about being social. They’re stuck in the traditional, outbound model of broadcast marketing in which communication is all one-way: talking at consumers instead of conversing with them.
If you’re trying to integrate social media into your marketing mix and want to follow generally accepted best practices, it may also help to know about some of the worst practices and how to avoid them. Here then are five of the more flagrant social faux pas, as pointed out in Business2Community:
Social Media Worst Practices
- Talk Only About Yourself
Don’t be that person. Of course, we all understand the need for marketing and sales. But social etiquette requires sharing relevant content authored not only by you, but also by outside sources. Balance your company’s promotional/product-driven material with informative, third-party content, as well as entertaining content that adds personality to the brand. - Buy Friends and Followers
Numbers can look impressive, but quality beats quantity here. Sure, you can buy a lot of followers, but what’s the point if they’re not engaged, or even human? The goal should be to build real relationships, not simply increase your follower count. This takes time. Attempting to shortcut the process by purchasing followers can backfire, harming your reputation as well as your bottom line. - Open More Accounts Than You Can Handle
Just because there are a lot of social networks doesn’t mean you need to open accounts on every one of them. Give yourself time to get the hang of each one before taking on another. Biting off more than you can chew can result in a lot of channels being abandoned, which projects an image of incompetence. Not a good impression to make. - Hashtag Binge-ing
Please use hashtags responsibly! A few well-chosen hashtags in a tweet can go a long way in extending the reach of your message. But don’t get carried away. Keep them relevant and avoid using more than three per post. - Over-Sharing
Sharing is caring until you start over-sharing, in which case it becomes overbearing! Don’t wear out your customers and prospects by publishing too many posts in too short a time. Space out your posts so you don’t come across like a spammer and annoy your followers into unfollowing you.