It’s so easy to make mistakes on social media. Posting too much about your company or products can turn off followers. Not sticking to a schedule for your posts….so many things.
Here are three common social media mistakes and how you can fix them.
You don’t follow the 80/20 Rule
Sounding too self-promotional in your posts will turn off your followers. Use the 80/20 Rule; it’s a great way to balance your social media posts.
80% of your posts should be:
Expert tips and advice
Industry-relevant news and links to relevant articles
Entertaining content such as memes and videos
For the other 20%, this is where you can promote your company and your products or services. Here your posts can include:
Special offers
Product news/updates
Coupons
Contests
You don’t address Negative Comments
You can’t make everyone happy so you’re bound to receive negative comments. How you deal with them is where you can make mistakes.
Don’t delete any negative comments. This can make your commenter angry and your followers will question your honesty. It is okay to remove any comments that are derogatory, racist, pornographic or otherwise inappropriate.
Respond to all comments in a timely manner. Check your social media feed a couple of times a day. This lets your followers see that you care about them.
Always respond to a negative comment in a positive way and show you care. If you don’t respond, people will think you have something to hide.
Don’t try to resolve a negative issue on social media. It can only blow up in your face. Take if offline. Contact the commenter directly and try to resolve the issue offline. You can always report on social media that a satisfactory resolution was reached.
Overuse of Hashtags
It’s so easy nowadays to use hashtags for everything. But overusing hashtags can turn off your followers and reduce your shares and views on social media platforms. #Nobody wants to #readposts #fullofhashtags! See…it’s not fun!
Each social media platform supports hashtags with letters, numbers, and underscores. Each platform has its own rules for hashtag usage.
Facebook – There are no limits to the number of hashtags you can add to a post. However, posts without hashtags tend to perform better than those with hashtags.
Twitter – There are no limits to the number of hashtags as long as your tweet is 140 characters or less. Engagement drops by an average of 17% on tweets with more than two hashtags. Shoot for one to three relevant hashtags.
Instagram – You can use up to 30 hashtags per Instagram post. Posts with 11 or more hashtags have the highest level of interactions.
Hashtag Do’s and Don’ts
Do:
Research about the hashtags you’ll be using
Find relevant hashtags
Create your own hashtags for your event, campaign or brand
Turn your keywords into hashtags
Don’t:
Cram too many hashtags into one post
Hashtag every word in your message
Make hashtags too long
Break your hashtag with symbols like “&”