For the past (almost) two years, I’ve worked as the social media manager for Mark Leisher Productions. During that time, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to building community and managing a brand. I’ve also seen a distinct lack of advice when it comes to what NOT to do – there are plenty of lists that tell you what to do, but few that address common mistakes that many beginners fall in to. When Tiffany Jones, the community manager of Creative Colony, asked me to give a talk about social media at their Creative Boost event, I knew I needed to address that lack of information. I thought about the social media crises I’d seen over the last few months, the behaviors that bothered me personally, and the things I’ve seen (and done) that just don’t work.
- Don’t overwhelm yourself with networks
It can be really tempting, especially as a young brand, to sign up for every social network that you hear about. Are all the teens moving away from Facebook to Snapchat? Better get a Snapchat account! The idea goes that the more networks you’re on, the wider your audience. But who has the time or energy to update 10 different networks a day, never mind work on building community, engaging with your followers, and tracking your analytics? Signing up for too many networks will just serve to diffuse your presence and weaken your brand. Instead, work with your client or your marketing team to determine your marketing goals, and pick the social network that will help you achieve those goals. Do you want an all-purpose page where people can keep track of what you’re up to? Facebook is good for that. Do you want to work more on building community and interacting with your fans and customers? Sign up for Twitter. What if you want to build your reputation as an expert in your field, or promote the goods you sell? LinkedIn and Pinterest can serve those functions. Every network has its own uses, and you should pick your network based on your goals. And remember – it’s better to have one or two accounts managed well than seven that are ignored.
- Don’t be lazy about crossposts
For those who don’t know, crossposting is when you publish the same content to multiple platforms. A lot of advice lists will tell social media beginners that crossposting is a good thing. Don’t listen to them! Ideally, you have some overlap in followers between your different social networks. If all you do is post the same content to each network, what incentive do they have to keep following you on all of them? As social media managers, it is our job to create unique and interesting content for our networks. And each network should have content tailored to your audience and your aforementioned marketing goals. But sometimes you have content that you want all your networks to see – whether you’ve written a new blog post, or shared a photograph, or your company is having a sale – you want this post spread far and wide. In that case, you can post it to multiple networks. BUT! And of course there is a but – take a few minutes to craft messages tailored to each network. Facebook can have a sentence or two, LinkedIn should place the emphasis on professional development and how you can help your network, and Twitter needs a strong lede to capture attention. Taking that time shows that you care about your content and you care about your audience. And only doing that occasionally will help you keep followers across multiple networks.
- Don’t overuse hashtags
Hashtags are actually pretty great. They let you join discussions, reach people you might not have otherwise, and engage with your community. But too many people seem to have the idea that the more hashtags they include in a post, the better. In fact, the opposite is true. Analytics have shown that posts with more than two hashtags see a 17% decrease in engagement – the opposite of what you’re looking for! There’s a few reasons for that; first, hashtags (while effective) aren’t attractive. Twitter automatically hyperlinks the hashtag, making it a different color. Combine that with the pound sign in front of each, and too many hashtags visually disrupt a post, making it more difficult to read. Second, the overuse of hashtags can look like spam – if you’re not strategically using them but rather cramming as many as possible into your post, it looks like you don’t care who you reach as long as you reach huge quantities of people. Finally, the overuse of hashtags can dilute your message. Their purpose is to help people find you based on topics they’re interested in that you’re discussing. If you have 10 words tagged, how will they know you actually discuss the one they’re interested in, or whether you discuss one of the other nine? Hashtags can be very effective, but they have to be used like salt; sparingly.
- Don’t buy your followers
It’s sad that this needs to be said, but apparently it does: don’t buy your followers! When you’re starting out, it can be really tempting to buy followers to boost your numbers. It makes you look like you already have a following, and those numbers next to (or below) your name look nice. But there are problems with purchased followers or Likes – they’re not real, and Facebook and Twitter are pretty on top of deleting fake accounts. Especially on Twitter, these purchased followers’ accounts usually only exist to be paid to follow others. Within 3-4 months, Twitter usually finds them and shuts them down. So you’ve spent money on fake followers only to lose them a few months later… how does that make sense? And when you lose those followers, it hurts your analytics and your credibility. If you’re a non-profit, you may be accused of astroturfing (“grassroots” campaigns or community that aren’t genuine), which will reflect negatively on your mission. Finally, the point of social media is to be social – if all your likes are fraudulent, you’re not actually tweeting to or interacting with people. Your engagement doesn’t go up, neither does your reach. You’ve only increased an arbitrary number that, sooner or later, will be negatively affected by account deletions. So if you’re thinking about buying your followers, just don’t.
- don’t double-down on offensive content
Especially as brands grow and your online presence increases, the likelihood of you offending someone goes up. You may have thought your content was innocuous, or even funny, but if someone is offended, you have to deal with it. And the way to deal with it is not to defend your actions and your content! Too often I have seen a brand post something that people took offense to, and deal with it all wrong. Instead of taking down the content and apologizing, the brands defended themselves, told people to lighten up, and even told people that if they didn’t like it, they should unfollow the brand. That’s a good method for reducing your followers and losing customers, so if that’s your goal, by all means defend yourself. If you’d rather keep your audience and improve your engagement, you need to apologize. And no fake apologies either! No mitigating words, no “I’m sorry if you were offended…”, none of that. You should post a straight-forward apology, and then drop it. Don’t engage further, don’t keep the drama alive. Take down the offensive content, apologize sincerely, learn from your mistakes, and don’t do it again.
- Don’t bury your head in the sand
So you posted something, and people are upset. It can be really tempting to ignore the crisis and hope it blows over, but trust me – it won’t. If you ignore a situation on social media, people won’t calm down – they’ll get even angrier, keep tweeting or commenting, and potentially share it with their feeds, which increases the attention to the problem. Even if you’ve addressed the issue offline (via a press release, or via email) if the problem has drawn attention on social media you need to address it on social media. Make a post apologizing for your actions, say what you’ve done to address the issue, and then drop it. You don’t have to respond to every person, but you do have to respond to the situation, in public. Brand management is hard in a crisis, but you still have to manage your brand.
So there you go – six things you should avoid doing on social media, and why they’re bad for your brand. Did I miss a faux pas that frustrates you? Have you experienced some of these errors? Share your stories in the comments!