10 Social Media Mistakes You Might Not Know You’re Making
It is easy to spot other people’s faults but sometimes, you can become blind of your own mistakes and commit them unconsciously.
Social media is hard to manage and there are lots of things to think about. Sometimes, you might think what you are doing is helping you but instead is doing the opposite. Therefore, we have gathered these 10 10 Social Media Mistakes You Might Not Know You’re Making.
Let’s get started!
1. Picking fights and arguing.
If you are facing some critics and evil comments, it is easy to believe that arguing and trying to win the battle is a good strategy but on social media, it is actually the opposite. Especially if you are running a business account because it might ruin your image.
It is said that you shouldn’t feed the trolls and this is very accurate regarding this point. Never respond to comments in a mean way since there is a bigger chance that it will harm you and your image. Comments are open for the world to see and if you are making it very clear to people that you can’t handle criticism, it can make people hesitate on you and you brand’s authenticity.
Instead, try to see it from their side of the story and try to put yourself in their position in order to get a better understanding of what they are saying actually holds any value and truth or not. Be as helpful and kind as possible when responding and you’ll dramatically increase the odds of converting an angry person to a fan.
2. Spelling and grammar errors.
Almost in all circumstances, making spelling and grammar errors can harm your image. Depending on your targeted audience, it can be good to adapt your language to the recipients but you should still try to do your very best in order to avoid committing these mistakes.
Making spelling and grammar errors can send an impression that you don’t care about your social media and don’t put too much time into them. If you just take a few seconds extra to read through what you’ve written, you can improve the overall image of brand on social media.
3. Never engaging with your audience.
No matter who you ask, you will learn that engaging is key to growing your page, increasing the interest of you and your brand while building valuable connections.
Doing something as simple as responding to a comment can make a person’s day and turn them into long time supporters of your brand and page. If you do the opposite however, which means never responding to questions and thanking people for their nice words, the odds of them continuing to comment and engaging with you on social media are very low.
4. Posting the same content over and over.
People love variation. If you want to grow you social media, you have to provide your followers with fresh content, regularly. It is okay to repost content every now and then if you have a valid reason to do so but if you have a habit of just posting old content over and over again, people will very soon get bored and unfollow you.
There are lots of ways to keep your content fresh and up to date. Read Where to find your social media content to learn about some of the tools you can use to always have a fresh feed.
5. Having unrealistic expectations.
It is very common that I hear about people who have been working with social media for a month or so are getting impatient and are wondering when the results are going to start to roll in. Social media is a long-term progress in most cases and you should be aware of this.
Sure, social media can generate some relatively quick results but growing your social media influence takes time and it is very important that you know this when starting with it. Otherwise, there is a big chance that you will get frightened when not getting the results you thought you would get, a week, month or even two months into the process.
In worst cases, a lot of people are even quitting with social media after just a short period of time with the conclusion that “social media isn’t for me” while the actual truth was that they were just too impatient to wait for the results.
6. Spamming.
There’s a misconception on social media that the more content, the better but this isn’t completely true.
The ultimate amount of posts per day depends on the platform you are using. They do however all have something in common- if you post too much, people will get tired of getting their feed clogged up and unfollow you. In the beginning of your “social media career”, do a little experimenting of how many posts you should post per day to get the best results.
There are also a few articles out there that helps you gain better knowledge of how many posts are recommended for different platforms.
7. Promoting too much.
Social media has many times over showed us how effective it is for marketing and there is no reason why you shouldn’t use it as a marketing tool as well. Do however promote your product in a moderate manner while mixing up your posts with other types of content that isn’t pushy sell posts.
8. Buying fake followers.
If you are new to social media, you can quickly get the understanding that it is good to buy fake followers and that it will help your brand but in reality, it does the opposite.
The cons outweigh the pros when it comes to buying fake followers on social media and the article Why you shouldn’t buy fake followers as an investment brings up just that.
In reality, buying fake followers or bots will in the long run do nothing but harm your social media image.
9. Not being active.
Have you ever visited a social media profile and realized that the account hasn’t posted for several weeks, months or even years?
You dodn’t necessarily need to spend 5 hours a day on social media but it is a recommendation that you post new content at least once a week but preferably, you should be posting a lot more than that.
Most importantly, make sure your social media pages aren’t just sitting there and collecting dust since this will have a negative. Firstly in the amount of unfollow you receive. Why? Because people are following you because they like what you post and because they want to see more of it but if you haven’t posted for a long while, it sends out signals that you have quit social media.
And obviously, there is no meaning of following someone if they aren’t going to post any content for a while, or even worse- if they think you have abandoned social media forever.
10. Inconsistent theme.
It is easy to believe that as long as you put out good content, you will succeed but quite so simple isn’t social media. Your social media pages should look very similar in terms of theme and vibe they mediate. A person should be able to quickly be able to recognize your brand on Twitter if they just scrolled your page on Instagram.
Make sure the theme is similar and the color of the posts are as well and you have already come a good way.
Have you committed any of the mistakes above?
We would love to hear about it in the comments below!
