Social
media provides many great opportunities for marketing your business to a wide
audience in an easy and cheap (or even free) way. However, there are also a
number of potential pitfalls
to using social media. Many people
have lost their jobs or got into trouble at work because of social media
activity! This isn’t just a problem for employees – as a business owner or
self-employed person, social media mistakes can risk you losing business or
tarnishing the reputation of your business.
Here
are five of the most common social media mistakes that you should avoid at all
costs.
1: Sharing Offensive or Controversial Content
This may
seem obvious – however, many businesses have caused serious
scandals due to this over the years. Of course, sharing (and this includes
“likes” and “re-tweets”, not just content you write or create yourself!) content that is
illegal, prejudiced, violent, explicit, or pornographic (unless that’s the
industry you’re working in, of course) is to be avoided, but there are also
unexpected things that customers/clients or potential customer/clients can take
offense to. Sharing political or religious opinions can alienate people who do
not share those opinions.
2: Ignoring Privacy Settings
Understanding
and using privacy settings is essential when using social media, especially if
you are using it as a business owner. If you a business owner, it is important
to remember to keep your personal social media account
separate from your business’ account. This doesn’t just mean having two different accounts – it also means
using privacy settings to ensure that your personal account is not publicly
accessible to your clients/customers. There is no use having a robust company
social media policy if you also have a personal profile displaying your name
and photo that is accessible to anyone searching for you. If your personal
profile has no privacy settings, anything you post from that account may be
associated with your business even if you did not intend it to be.
3: Treating All Platforms Exactly the Same
Every social
media site is different, with different customs and etiquette and different
purposes. Simply copying and pasting the same content to multiple social media
sites may save time, but it can also come across as lazy and some content may
not be best suited for some sites. If you are trying to develop a diverse
digital marketing strategy, companies like clickintelligence.co.uk can help you.
4: Posting Too Much
Posting
regularly (exactly how regularly varies based on the site and the industry you
are in) is recommended but posting too often is likely to result in you posting
lower-quality content. Not to mention, your audience will start to tune out if
they are overloaded with content, and you may lose followers.
5: Posting Too Little
Posting
too infrequently can be as bad as posting too frequently. Most social media
algorithms will stop recommending your pages to users if it seems that your
account is not active. Another danger of not engaging with your social media
accounts is that clients/customers or potential clients/customers may try to
message or contact you and receive no reply. This can harm your brand’s
reputation, even if it was not deliberate!
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