Mistakes Companies Should Never Do in Social Media
Every business company is now turning into social media to promote their business, and connect with their readers.
It is the “in” thing in online marketing because everyone seems to be on the internet, connecting with their friends or sharing interesting contents.
It is just logical that companies go to the place where their target audience are always present.
But using corporate social media accounts is not like the way individual user uses it. Companies do not realize that using social media the wrong way can hurt them instead of boosting it. Don’t let that happen.
To help, analyze these mistakes companies do in social media:
Posting Updates Any Time of the Day
Not all people are online to check your updates. The time they go online, your updates are already buried under other people’s updates. For optimum effect, you have to post updates when many people are online. A study made by Buffer App says that engagement to updates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays than other days of the week. But in Twitter, the weekends are the time when more people are responding to tweets.
Too Much/ Few Updates
Always update you account to keep your followers informed about you. You can also share pictures, infographics, news and videos. According to Kissmetrics, in Facebook photos get more engagement than ordinary updates. It gets 84% click-through, as well. On the downside, posting too much might flood the feeds of your followers. Consider the fact that they might want to read other contents from other people. Post in moderation, just enough to keep page activities going.
Don’t Post Same Content Multiple Times
Don’t you want to block the person who keeps posting the same things over and over? But no, posting multiple times can actually improve your web traffic and sales. Guy Kawasaki, explains that, “I don’t assume that all my followers are reading me 24 x 7 x 365.” He posts tweets three times a day in 8 hour interval and he believes that this is the reason why he gets thousands of traffic daily. Not all people use social media at the same time, so update several times help in reaching trough more followers.
Posting Unrelated Stuff
Never post celebrity news if your company is about books. Consider your followers, they follow your feeds because they love books not gossips. Stick to a theme to create a solid image for your company, and this theme should reflect on what products or services your company sells.
Follow Too Many/ Few People
For a newbie company, following people to get noticed is important. But this does not guarantee that they’ll follow back. Too many follows make your account spammy, whereas following few makes you less connected to people. Be wise to create balance in your follow to followers ratio because it also gives an image on what you are as a company. Also, poor ratio might trigger suspension, especially in Twitter so be aware of that.
Ignoring Followers
There are many instances when users vent their anger through your social media. Don’t act too offended. Be open-minded instead of arguing with them and just help them as much as you can. Reply to their tweets or status to share your concern but don’t make the conversation public. Continue the communication using private messages.
Not Connecting to People
Your accounts are made to connect to people. Don’t act like a wallflower in a party, ignoring others. Immerse yourself to the conversation and answer your followers’ questions. This helps you get closer to them to provide them with better product or service.
Treating All Social Media the Same
While all social media platforms may look the same, they are still different in many ways. The audience, the language, and the custom varies. That is why, it is important for the administrator to understand how a certain platform works, before posting anything on it. Most companies tend to post identical contents on different platforms. This is not a good practice because it makes updates impersonal.
Not Having Social Media Policy
Your social media accounts might be properly managed but the social media accounts of your employees are dangerous time bomb. They may harm the company’s online presence anytime. Create a social media policy to remind your employees on how they should present themselves online.
Social media is very effective to connect to the market, boost sales, and promote the company. But be careful! It can badly damage your brand too.
Your company social media accounts are like a double edged swords- effective but dangerous. Any wrong use can destroy your company’s brand name. So be careful. By knowing the bad ways other companies use their social media accounts, you get to plan and wield social media, only to your advantage.
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“Don’t act like a wallflower in a party, ignoring others.”
Great point. I think new users to social media tend to get stuck in wallflower mode. It can be difficult to switch gears and be more social.
Hey Andrew,
I used to be this way many years back…
I cannot answer for Maddy, who wrote the article, but my opinion is that if you are going to run a business, you will need to break out of your shell and engage with people.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting…
John Engle
John,
Some good points made in this post.
Social media is an art and has always interested me on how to reach the most, using it.
Analyzing the way your followers behave and are on it is an important key to succeeding in getting more shares and followers to your social accounts.
Thanks for the post!
– Samuel
Hey Samuel,
Maddy did a great job putting this article together…
You also make some great points… analyzing the behavior of people would give you a guideline to what’s working and what isn’t.
Using this knowledge and applying to future postings would be a smart move, which will gain you greater exposure.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting…
John Engle
Hi John –
All solid tips on things we should never do in the social media game. You do bring up a good point about posting times. This is something I’ve always believed in and social media posting should be strategic. After all, if you are using Facebook for business, then it should be treated like a business.
Engagement is everything because just like in reality, it’s always good to network with people both offline and online.
Love today’s post John!
Hey Nate,
Maddy did a fantastic job putting together a guideline for the do’s and dont’s of social media for business.
I think people are slowly discovering that connecting/engagement IS everything, and their business will virtually fail without it.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
John Engle
Hey Guys,
Thank you! Your comments are overwhelming. It is nice to know that there are people like you who understand how social media should be used in a business setting.
Social media is a good tool to use, but people should know how to use it on their advantage. Reading tips and posts like this can be really helpful.
Maddy Bertelsen
Nice post with a such a great and effective points Maddy. I like it and just share the link with my buddy who asked me about the effective use of social media. By the way thanks Maddy. 🙂
Thank you Bhavesh Patel
Your welcome Maddy 🙂
Posting the same content multiple times- this makes me think of a few that I know on Google+ for example. It gets to be like the boy who cried wolf and nobody pays any attention. Audience is important also, I realize that Google+ profiles are public so re-posting blog entries to Google+ seems to make SEO sense but it gets to be repetitive and spammy.
Also- when speaking of the followed/followers ratio does anyone have an idea of what ratio to keep inside of? For example I watch this in Google+ and try to keep a ratio of no more than 2.5 to 1 or 2.5 followed by me for every 1 following me.
Hi Sasha,
Maddy did a great job putting this post together… I cannot speak for her, but I can throw in my thoughts.
I too have heard what Maddy wrote about posting your content multiple times a day on Twitter and maybe even in some Facebook groups, but don’t over do it, spread it out. Moderation is key.
For Facebook, think about your viewers… would you want to receive multiple emails from groups for the same content over and over and over?
I personally have received identical emails, that fill up my inbox from top to bottom, from the same person on Facebook because I am a part of many groups, I finally put her emails in as Junk Mail because it was getting tiring to see 50 to 100 emails a day from her.
P.S. She finally got banned from the Facebook groups!
As for Google+, I have heard through the grapevine that posting multiple times with the same content within different groups is NOT a good idea, spammers annoy viewers, so Google won’t stand for it.
As for a ratio of followers to following, in my opinion I think it should be as close as possible, but the platforms know that it is not possible in all cases.
I hope I have helped!
Thank You for stopping by and commenting…
John Engle
Great post…..I also have people on Facebook that post on a day to day basis every hour on the hour it does get annoying but you don’t want to hurt there feelings by blocking them so I just let them be lol. I’m currently in the process of learning how to engage my audience and its giving me a abundance of knowledge and a passion for sharing.