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!
