Social media is a staple in our daily lives, which makes it easy to take it for granted. We have to remember that while technology is a great thing, we are still interacting with people – and, as such, we need to maintain a level of appropriateness. As we continue our journey of modern communication, here are a few things to avoid. Don’t…
Engage with haters, trolls, and other negative influences online.
Battling them is—and always will be—a lost cause. If you do, you’ll waste time, energy, and creativity that you could be using to build your brand and serve your customers.
Post without proofreading.
If you publish posts with careless grammar and misspellings, it will reflect poorly on your brand. Before making posts live, review what you wrote and fix mistakes. I advise reviewing the content again after you publish it because sometimes sneaky errors can slip by despite initial proofreading efforts.
Ignore your followers’ questions, comments, and messages.
Although this seems like a logical no-no, I see it happen often. Ignoring your audience is the fast track to causing hard feelings, missing opportunities, and damaging your brand. Keep tabs on activity on your social media accounts, and respond promptly to your followers.
Use AI as a substitute for human interaction.
Marketing automation saves time, but never use it as a replacement for human-to-human communication on social media. Your followers expect to develop a relationship with your brand, which can only be done if you’re genuinely, humanly engaged with them.
Dwell too much on your competition.
Watching your competition is essential, but more critical to your success is developing your business and delivering excellent service to your customers. Leverage and nurture your brand’s unique strengths and capabilities rather than trying to be a carbon copy of another company.
Online interactions are a permanent and open forum. Beware of how you represent yourself and your business!
Nice concise list of Social Media No-No's.
I particularly liked number four. I have noticed a growing number of people post from social media management platforms. So, your point about not letting automation take the place of real, down to earth networking is VERY relevant today!
Thanks for the value.
Bubbie Gunter
P.S. I was also happy not to have to read through 2000 words to digest the value here. 🙂
Hi Bubbie,
Thanks for taking the time to read and write a thoughtful comment. There is a limit to what automation can do. Some folks haven't yet received the memo that we are building relationships here.
Keep on fighting the good fight!
Rachel