5 Social Media Mistakes Your Business Must Avoid

With presidential tweets, Instagram photoshopping and accusations of #FakeNews, 2017 can thus far be summed up as the Year of Social Media. These days, a well-managed Twitter or Facebook profile can help a business thrive or sink like a stone if untended. Which got us thinking – besides #Covfefe and # CashMeOusside, what other social media mistakes are people and businesses doing on a daily basis? We weren’t alone in our thinking.

Enter CJG Digital Marketing, with a visually amazing infographic, that showcases five social media mistakes to avoid. We’ve highlighted the bullet points for you and explained how these errors can be best avoided:

Too Many Promotional Messages | Mistake 1

According to this survey, 58% of social followers are annoyed by too many promotional messages. The sheer number of Facebook sponsored posts is creeping up faster than you can scroll these days so it’s no wonder that followers can become resistant, if not hostile, to your promotion. But promotional posts are vital for some businesses: about 85% of people need to see a product or service multiple times on social media before purchasing. So in reality, you’ll need to balance out your promotions from your informative posts. The best balance? Posting promotions about 2 or 3 times in a week and focusing on informative posts the rest of the week.

Highly Irrelevant Posts | Mistake 2

If you’re a Israeli company posting about American politics or a Kosher food startup looking to ride the latest #hashtag trending topics each day, here’s a stat you should know: 41% of your followers will actually unfollow you if you veer off into irrelevant posts. Your followers chose to follow you because of your brand and what it represents to them. So stick to the plan and deliver posts and content that they expect to see. Yes, occasionally, you can throw in a #GameofThrones reference or share a great meme that’s loosely connected to your brand, but overall, maintaining brand relevancy on social media keeps followers happily following.

Tweeting Too Often | Mistake 3

Do your Twitter followers really need to see you weigh in on the fifteen pieces of news that day? 35% of followers say no and they think that too many tweets (don’t even get them started on retweets!) will cause them fly away from you. Side note – are you seeing a trend here from Mistake 1 and Mistake 2? Tweets are good. Too many tweets on topics that are irrelevant will lead to high disengagement rates and unfollows. Even the President of the United States has had a controversial experience with Twitter lately. Play it safe and keep your tweets down to an acceptable average, focusing on relevancy with each tweet.

Being Anti-Social | Mistake 4

Did you know that social media contains the word social in it? Mind blown. If your social media page is out of sight, then you’ll be out of the mind of the end user. It’s important to carve your own unique niche, style and voice in the crowded social-sphere and constantly remind people that you’re alive and well. If you’re under-posting to your social pages, you risk causing your brand to be forgotten, allowing competitors to jump in and fill in the gap. True, posting often can be overwhelming; there are dozens of social networks, messaging apps and website plugins out there to juggle all at once. The quick-fix to that: focus on your best platforms and connect with customers consistently on those platforms. The best solution: hire a Jewish social media agency to craft consistent messaging across all social networks so your brand doesn’t get relegated to the backseat.

Not Replying to Messages | Mistake 5

People, and certainly customers, want to be heard. What made Twitter so popular was the fact that ordinary people could now connect with high profile personalities, celebrities and sports stars directly by tagging them in their posts. So if your business isn’t engaging or replying to people’s direct posts via social, 15% of respondents say that’s reason enough to unfollow. These days, you can easily set an autoresponder to cover you until you get a chance to give a good reply. But you should reply to all messages as soon as you can. Social media makes it extremely easy for you to connect to your customers but the pendulum swings both ways; answer your customers before they get a bad vibe from your page.

TO SUM IT UP: We know, life is busy, your business is growing and social media alone is truly a timesink. So be sure to hire a social media agency that will set up your social media operation to stay true to your brand, always available, and never irrelevant to your market. When done correctly, you’ll be able to turn your error-prone social media into a mistake-free social butterfly. Hire a social media agency >