9 Things to Avoid in your Social Media Marketing

We’ve all seen the lists of things you should do for your social media marketing, the must try hacks and the time-saving tips. But what about the things you should avoid doing on social media?

Unfortunately, there are several ways you can damage your social media following, reputation and overall marketing success. So, in this blog I’m going to share with you the 9 things you absolutely should avoid when planning, creating and engaging with your social media content and channels.

1 – Never buy followers

It can be hard attracting new followers and when you see others doing so much better than you, it can be tempting to cut corners and buy some followers from Fiverr. Don’t do this! When it comes to followers it’s all about quality and not quantity.

Think about it. If you sell a niche product or service and you have 1000 followers but only 10 of them are actually interested in your product because the remaining 900 or so are purchased followers, you’re only going to make a handful of sales. But the other 900+ followers who don’t engage with your content are inadvertently telling the Facebook algorithms that your content isn’t good/relevant to them.

This means Facebook won’t put your content on to people’s news feed. So, just 10 interested and engaged followers would get you the same number of sales and they’d tell Facebook that your content is high quality so you can attract more followers organically.

2 – Don’t assume everyone following you is the same on social media

Another common mistake is to assume that every follower is the same, i.e., they’re all female business owners, or they’ve all purchased from you in the past. With this mindset, you’re likely to create content that only appeals to part of your audience.

While we should focus on our marketing avatar and ideal clients, it is important to recognise that we will pick up others along the way and that we should consider them when creating social media content too. So, use your insights and analytics on each social media channel to see who your audience really is, and tweak your marketing accordingly.

3 – Avoid using bots with your social media marketing

I know it can be a time-consuming headache engaging with your followers, adding followers, interacting with other social media accounts, etc. It can easily become a full-time job in itself!

So, you might be tempted to use bots and systems that automatically engage with followers, perhaps by replying with a canned response to a comment they’ve left, or to manage your followers, etc. The problem here is that people can always tell when something is natural or not.

Being authentic in your social media marketing is important, so avoid using systems (except for scheduling your content which I do recommend!)

4 – Don’t delete negative comments

While reputation management is important and those negative comments and reviews can put a downer on things, don’t delete them. Your followers can see what’s going on and how you handle the situation will do more to make or break your reputation than the negativity ever can.

Quickly responding to the comment, apologising (yes, even if it is their mistake) and taking action to put things right is key.  Have a read of the 5 ways you should handle complaints on your social media to discover how you can turn that negative comment into something positive.

5 – Avoid anything controversial

Ok, this could be controversial in itself! Essentially, your business page is not a place for your personal views and so anything political, covid-related, anything that could potentially cause offense or disagreements with others should be left to your personal pages.

If there is a particular political event that is relevant to your business and/or audience, try to stick to the facts and keep emotions at bay. In these instances, turning off comments can be a sensible idea to avoid heated discussion.

6 – Don’t complain from your business pages

We’ve all had negative experiences with companies and want to moan or complain about the poor customer service we’ve received but your branded social media pages are not the place to be doing this. Keep it to your personal accounts.

What you put out on your social media is being seen by your audience, and yes, some judgements (rightly or wrongly) will be made about you from your posts. You’re probably a lovely, genuine and caring person and go to great efforts to portray this in your marketing. So don’t put a dent in your reputation by posting something negative that could let your audience perceive you in a bad light.

7 – Don’t overdo…

The gifs, the emojis or the hashtags!

While some hashtags are important for a post to be found easily, and gifs and emojis can be a great way to gain attention on an ever-changing news feed, there is such a thing as too much.

When your page is filled with pictures, smiley faces and more hashtags than content it can become difficult for your audience to quickly and easily absorb the content. Careful, planned use of hashtags and only using emojis and gifs when it is appropriate to do so is a good rule to follow.

8 – Be consistent with your branding

Using Canva and other apps/templates is a great way to help with your marketing (I even published a blog on how to use Canva here) but you need to make sure the images, memes and designs you create are consistent with your branding.

That means you change the colours to your own colour palette, that you keep fonts consistent across your marketing, and that the images you use are relevant and appropriate to your business. It can be very obvious when a Canva post has been quickly put together with minimal changes as it really does stick out like a sore thumb amongst your regular content.

9 – Make sure you’re following a social media plan

While random posting as I call it is great, you really should have a social media plan in place. Just like with a business plan, it’ll help you understands the why’s, what’s and when’s of social media posts. If you don’t know why you’re posting, what the content is or when to post, it’s likely that your posts aren’t going to reach their full potential and your marketing aims.

If you need help putting together a social media marketing plan or would like to pick my brain on anything and everything social media – get in touch with me today for a friendly chat.