Social media is a non-stop balancing act where one wrong move could quickly spiral your brand’s reputation out of control. In social media, it’s essential to think through every single post before hitting publish, as, even though there’s always the option to hit delete, once it’s been published on the World Wide Web, the evidence will remain there forevermore.
With that in mind, listed below are 4 things you need to avoid doing on your social media pages:
1. Overusing hashtags
You’re a brand, not a #highschoolstudent, so you absolutely, definitely need to avoid using too many hashtags in your social media posts. The last thing you want to come across as is the brand that’s desperate for attention, so use your hashtags strategically and sparingly to give the best impression of your brand. There are also tools available, such as ritetag, which give you information about what’s trending along with statistics for that particular hashtag.
2. Unnecessary/lack of punctuation
Unfortunately, in many instances brands seem to think they can abuse their use of punctuation on social media. Content writing is still content writing, no matter where it is published, therefore you need to use your punctuation properly across every social platform and avoid certain unnecessary content marketing habits, such as countless exclamation marks.
On the other end of the spectrum, social media seems to have compelled people to forget everything they learnt in school about punctuation, leading them to eliminate commas or full stops completely. This is bad news for your brand, so don’t make the same mistake that countless other brands are using; use your punctuation wisely!
3. Using the same stock images on repeat
Your social media audience wants something new and fresh daily, so avoid using the same stock images on repeat. The most creative option is to take your own images as these will without doubt never have been seen before by anybody. Alternatively, there are so many websites out there offering high-quality stock images that are free for use even commercially (see here for an example). Make sure you check T&Cs/licenses very carefully before using any images from the internet, as many require attribution or even licenses before being used.
4. Automatically pushing Facebook content to Twitter
It’s so easy to copy and paste from one platform to the other, or better still, to connect your Facebook posts to your Twitter account so they do the hard work for you! However, remember that all social media platforms are very different, and work in very different ways. It’s no use doing the exact same thing on every platform. Twitter needs precise, succinct tweets with one or two hashtags; Facebook gives you more space to express yourself in writing and Instagram is heavily focused on the quality of the image. When you approach a platform, treat each one individually to portray the most positive best brand image.
Keep the above tips in mind when you’re posting to your social media account and you will come across as a leading brand that definitely knows what it’s doing!
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