6 Things Brands Should Avoid On Social Media

Without much exception, most brands today are present on social media in some or another. Some have accounts on any and every available platform while others find success on one and develop it as a community niche. Never the less, the rules of engagement are always changing as more and more ways to share brand messaging becomes available. With something that changes at such a fast pace, it can be easy to lose sight of conventional wisdom and how they can be similar or drastically different from the rules about other forms of marketing. Here are just a few things brands should avoid on social media.

Don’t Skip The Pictures

Visual content tends to fare much better on social media, so make sure to use images as much as you can whenever it makes sense. There are platforms that cater specifically to the eye like Instagram, but be sure using it will make sense from a branding perspective. Imagery would go without saying in print, TV or traditional online ads, and social media is no different. As consumers are now constantly scrolling through their timeless looking for the information they need, images stand out and encourage them to like, share, re-post or save for later.

Don’t Overcomplicate Things

Conventional advertising wisdom greatly favours simplicity, with the popular adage Keep It Simple, Stupid showing up frequently when talking about marketing, and social media is no different. With the sheer amount of information available on these platforms, it’s important to keep your brand message as concise as possible. Focus on one call to action (even if it’s just to check something out) and go from there, never losing your brand voice in the process. Remaining consistent in the way you communicate with fans or followers will also be an important way to distinguish yourself from other brands, especially ones that exist in a similar niche as yours does. Especially on platforms that focus on images, having clear & straightforward captions will help your followers understand what you’re all about.

Don’t Spam

This is an important one! In many brands’ first forays into social media, a lot of emphases is places on gaining followers and brand recognition quickly and by any means necessary. To achieve this, some resort to spamming links, images and messaging to users who aren’t following them at all. Though this might be approached the same way one would approach door-to-door sales, the turnover is much worse. Spamming rarely results in a follow back or any other type of interaction, and on some platforms can result in being temporarily or permanently suspended from using it. It may be a slow build, but go about acquiring your followers the old fashioned way, that way you know they’re genuinely interested in your brand and not just triggered by your spam attempts. Which leads to the next point..

Don’t Buy Followers

Buying followers was a popular method in the early days of Twitter around 5 years ago. Having lots of followers denoted notoriety and legitimacy, prompting others to follow also – or so was the assumption. As users have become more savvy, users are able to spot an account with fake followers by simply looking in the followers list. Spam and Bot followers usually have no profile image or use generic stock imagery, and there are thousands of them. It will also be easy to spot a lack of interactions because, well, the followers aren’t real people who can interact. While the appearances of fake followers can look impressive to others at first, it’s easy to figure out and not useful in the long because real engagement – sharing and re-posting so your content goes even farther – is what you’re after.

Don’t Focus On Just Fans

As much as followers and fans are an important metric to watch for on any of your social media accounts, bear in mind that those followers actually being engaged is what matters most. Granted, the more followers you have, the more people there will be to interact with your content. On average, around 10% of your followers will interact with your posts in some way. That isn’t to say the rest aren’t paying attention, but users are all on at different times and they may save a link or message you posted for later consumption without necessarily acting on it right away.

Don’t Ignore Your Followers

A mistake some brands make is that after producing engaging content, and receiving said engagement from their followers, there’s no follow-up. Whether it’s to ask a question, give a compliment or voice a concern, social media is an important channel to respond even if it’s just to direct them to and email address or contact form to provide more details. It’s important to respond as soon as you’re able to, so it may be a good idea to grant account access to multiple people who are all able to handle customer service.

Whatever your favourite platform of choice may be, it’s important that you’re posting quality content on a consistent basis! For all social media concerns, contact us at 647 350 0357