8 habits brand should avoid on social media

Getting your social media activity right can sometimes be a little tricky; the landscape is always changing with updates and new features brought out daily, but there are a few things that can generally be frowned upon. Students are the most in touch with social media, they are also very savvy when it comes to interacting with brands and can often be very unforgiving if they see something they don’t like. Here are 8 tips to ensure your brand doesn’t get caught out on social media:

1 Using auto messages to welcome people to your social media pages
This can often come across as feeling fake and impersonal. Even more so if there is a link to your web page or sales offers. This can also be deemed as annoying and is likely to get you unfollowed. You need to get to know your audience before shoving a sales pitch in their faces

2 Setting your profile to private 
If you are a business and you have your account settings set to private, it just doesn’t make sense. If you’re not willing to share your posts with people who don’t follow you, how will they know they want to follow you? You should be showing people content that makes them take an interest in your business, not hiding behind privacy settings

3 Tag people or other businesses that aren’t relevant to try and get more reach
Doing this when it’s relevant is obviously okay, but just doing it to try and boost a post where it doesn’t make sense will make you seem like you don’t know what you’re doing, and people will probably not want to read your posts. It’s also likely to anger the other brand/person that you’re tagging because it’s seen as spammy

4 Posting links to your website or trying to promote your product on someone else’s page
This is just disrespectful. Unless you’ve been given permission or are in some form of partnership with another business, you should never post on their page in this manner. Doing this to try and attract your target market away from other brands may actually damage your brand image and integrity

5 Randomly adding people to Facebook groups or events
This is just plain annoying, and likely to get you unfollowed quickly. Adding people to a group or event that you think they might be interested in is just not a good way to approach them, you should get people interested and make them want to join themselves. For example, on Facebook you could set up an event and invite people to attend – as long as it’s relevant. Alternatively you could use targeted advertising to promote the event to people who are likely to respond and appreciate the heads up

6 Using someone else’s content as your own or copying their content
If you want to share someone else’s content then that’s great as long as you give them the credit they deserve for it. Often businesses steal or try to rip off content from their competitors on social media because it is easy to do. This can devalue your brand and you shouldn’t do it. It’s okay to take some inspiration from your competitors, but try and be original – This is what will make your brand stand out

7 Spammy posts
Posts that don’t really have a point and aren’t entertaining will quickly become annoying to your followers. Messages like ‘buy! buy! buy!’ all the time should be avoided. Also promising fans one thing and sending them to another thing (i.e. using click-bait) will definitely open your brand up to abuse. So always share content that is authentic, engaging and does what it says on the tin

8 Sharing posts that are not credible
Sharing something from a source that is not credible can be damaging to your brand image, especially if the claim is something completely outlandish. You should always check your sources before posting on social media, whether it’s about your business or something completely random