Decided to write up and source a few Social media tips for what not to do when looking after brand pages. Do not under any circumstances do any of the following.
I’ve been working in Social Media for quite a while now and I’ve made my fair share of mistakes. I think my Twitter account first existing of drunken ramblings and deep lyrics. Thats more from a personal account and I guess its entirely up to you what you want to do with it. This post is more about Brands and some of the things I’ve learnt on how to run them.
So here we go,
Social Media Tips : Top 10 things you should never do
1. Do not make up hashtags
Yes, when you have a new campaign it needs a Hashtag, and it serves a purpose for your campaign. We all know the benefits of using Hashtags correctly. What I’m talking about here are those posts where hashtags are used as a random keyword. Tweets like :
Our new Sale is live this Saturday #WhoopWhoop
Or
Our Sale goes live this weekend #Getsomecheapclothes
Do you really think that hashtag is going to do anything for your post? Are people looking for that? And even if they are, will your tweet be relevant? I’m not alone in this thinking :
Mike Mcgrail of Velocity Digital :
My biggest bug-bear right now is the complete and utter abuse of hashtags. People using too many of them, not finding out the most appropriate ones to use etc. They are supposed to be helpful, but many brands are just using as many as possible in an attempt to gain attention. Looks so cheap!
2. Avoid Hashtag abuse
My general rule, never more than two Hashtags, if that. One of the main culprits here is Instagram users. They absolutely rinse Hashtags, sometimes up to 10. It looks desperate and amateur. Stop.
3. Never Hijack News Tragedies
This is pretty self explanatory, but believe it or not there are people out there still doing it. You probably get a load of reach and engagement, but for all the wrong reasons
Remember the #Aurora fail? A Fashion retailer saw the term was trending and jumped on board to promote a Kim Kardashian-inspired Aurora dress. Unfortunately the term was trending due to the Dark Knight Rises cinema mass shooting. Check why things are trending. In short, Hijacking any trend that you aren’t related to isn’t good practice, unless you are taking part in it
4. Never autopost across channels
This goes out to the people that thinks its a great time saver to setup systems that auto post across channels without tailoring that message to fit the channel intended. Nothing worse than a copied tweet going out over your Facebook channel. Take the time to repurpose. It’s different audiences on each of those channels.
Never make assumptions without checking data.
5. Don’t like your own posts.
Stop this! What are you trying to achieve? I’ve seen brand like their own posts, never understood it
6. Never automate responses
One of my pet hates, when I follow someone I think is pretty clued up and then end up with an Auto DM about how thankful they are for the follow. Its like those being on hold things “Your call is important to us” – every time I get one of those I instantly unfollow as it makes that person lose all credibility. The same goes for those Paper.li or auto aggregated newspaper like posts. Don’t get me started on ‘My tweet stats” I don’t care how many times you posted or how many followers you got. I’ve also turned off auto post for whenever I post a blog, I prefer to customise it more, make it friendly. Social Media is human, be human.
7. Never plagiarise content
I know someone that does this all the time. They copy witty posts, or copy and paste text into their tumblr and claim it as their own. If you are going to do it, credit the writer. Rewrite it from your point of view.
8. Stop asking for like or Share to grow your reach
Maybe you disagree here, but it drives me crazy when I see posts from big brands asking users to Like or share based on their choice. For instance :
Check out the new product X. Share if you want it in Red or Like if you want it in black.
WTF?! If you are pushing out quality content, and have established what your audience likes and engages with, then you wouldn’t be posting these bullshit posts. (check out my Fighting the Facebook Algorithm for tips on creating an engaged audience)
9. Do not post for the sake of posting
See those “Happy Friday everyone!” posts? They suck. It tells me as a consumer you have nothing to say. Some Social media ‘guru’ has told you need 3 posts a day and that one just finished the quota. There is no set quantity of posts. If you are quoting this to clients, or have had it quoted to by some agency… They are wrong. What I mean is, if someone tells you when quoting for work that your payment will cover 5 posts a week. Fire them now. Somedays I only post one, on another day 10 times. Granted these post all have to be effective and not just a blitz of crap. I’ve never worked on a campaign where I had a set amount of posts. Early days, when taking over a page or account for a new project I run tests. Three a day, see how it does, 2 on a Saturday, 4 late at night. There is no set pattern.
10. Buying Fans or Followers
I left this too the end as it is one of the most important things you should never do for your clients or yourself. To this day I have still taken on pages or accounts that you can see from a mile away have paid for their numbers. Its the most pointless thing. Think about it, you pay for 100,000 fans or 5000 followers, then what. Your posts do nothing. No engagement, no RT’s, nothing. I wrote a post a few years back about this and think its still applicable : Padding the numbers
What you do when you buy these users is in a sense invite a load of strangers to a party and none of them are going to talk or interact. You have an empty room. Have a look at some of these social media expert twitter accounts. 180,000 followers – one Retweet here and there. No one is talking, no one is interested. On top of that, how would you ever justify the power of your channels, if your client is UK based and you’ve purchased a shit load of followers that are in Pakistan – those sales are not going to come.
There are loads more but those were the ones that came to mind whilst putting this post together, feel free to add some below.
A big thank you to the Reddit guys that gave some of these suggestions. Original Subreddit here
