Whether you are a student, retired, stay-at home parent, or a professional with years of experience in the workforce, it is important to be sure your social media presence is an accurate portrayal of yourself, and your career. While using social media for yourself or posting for your job, there are many ways social media can do more harm than good. Here are five social media DON’TS that you might be making without even realizing it.
- Posting too frequently or not enough: Many times, people believe that to ensure engagement they must constantly be posting every day or even multiple times a day. This may be aggravating your followers and lead them to unfollow or unsubscribe to your content. Your posting frequency should vary by each social media account. For example, if you are managing a personal Instagram account, then once a day posting is plenty but for a business page. For Facebook or LinkedIn, twice a day is acceptable. The key to posting on many social media sites is consistency. Find out what time of day you receive the most engagement on your accounts and stick with it. Not posting enough can lead to followers getting bored with lack of content then eventually unfollowing you.
- Ignoring comments and questions: Sharing your life and business on social media will most likely result in questions and comments from your followers. When creating a social media account, you are automatically opening up a new way to communicate with friends, family, customers, clients, etc. This means that people are going to have questions, comments, concerns and opinions about what you are sharing. Ignoring comments may show your followers that you do not care about them or do not have interest in what they are saying. By commenting and interacting with your followers, it not only shows them you are being attentive but also allows you to create connections with people you may not have a connection with already.
- Don’t ask for engagement: Nothing is worse on social media than when someone begs you to like their post or purchase their product. Followers do not want to see you constantly asking them to share your Facebook post or like your Instagram picture. To get your followers to connect with you through social media, know what your audience likes to see and why. Pay attention to followers who post things you’re interested in. What are they posting? By understanding your audience, it will help you create and share the most effective content to get them to interact with your posts.
- Posting the same thing to each social media platform: Let’s be frank: posting the exact same thing on every account can be tedious and boring to your followers. There are going to be people who follow you on all of your accounts and they do not want to read the same post on all of them. Each social media platform is different and has a different purpose for using it. Consider posting shorter news and happenings on Twitter and focus on posting images and captions on Facebook. Understanding the social media platform you are using and tailoring your content to each site will allow for more interest in your posts.
- Using every social media platform: The list of social media sites today could go on forever. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google+, etc. are all popular social media sites that are used for personal or business reasons. It may be tempting to try out every platform, but it’s important to refrain from social media burn-out. There is simply not enough time in the day to adequately manage each account and effectively engage with your followers. Figure out how you are going to present yourself on your platforms and reach your targeted demographic rather than signing up for every social media site under the sun. I suggest you choose three that you think your specific target audience is using, and build your followers there.
Social media is a key resource for sharing and connecting with others in today’s instant-contact world. Whether you have personal or business accounts, how you manage your social media can positively or negatively impact your reputation, readership and engagement with followers. Check to be sure you are avoiding these five social media don’ts on your social media platforms. It can efficiently increase how you interact with your audience and how you represent yourself.
Author: Jessica Turner, Temple University Communications student