30 Great Social Media Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Many brands are launched to this sea that constitute social networks without knowing how to swim; With the confidence that they will know how to stay afloat.

Unfortunately, sometimes a treacherous wave surprises them, or they are dragged by the current, and they are not able to get ahead; They do not know the medium and can end up sinking irreparably. 

30 Great Social Media Mistakes and How to Avoid ThemHere are some of the most common situations you may face:

You do not know what you are social networking for. Your presence has no purpose; Let’s make it clear: you are about to be. Have you heard on more than one occasion the importance of having an open profile on Facebook or Twitter, and you are not going to be less. But if you are not clear what you want to achieve in this area, and you work to achieve it; You can achieve the opposite effect.

You do not have any kind of strategy. Your actions in social media do not attend to any specific criteria or objective; Are characterized by improvisation. At the time you decided to register your company in different social platforms and since then you consider that your brand is already 2.0. Nothing is further from reality. To develop an effective presence in Social Media you have to have a strategy, which defines the actions to be carried out, as well as the objectives to be pursued and how to act in each case.

You do not have a specific budget to manage your presence in social networks. So what, is it free? It erases from your mind the idea that social networks do not need an economic investment. It is true that to register a profile you do not have to pay, but to manage it correctly.

Your nephew, who knows a lot about this, is the one who carries the social networks of your company. It has always been said that cheap is expensive, but in this case can be very expensive; Is at stake your most precious value, the image of your company. It is essential to have specialized personnel, who also knows the company and is able to represent it correctly in Social Media.

The frequency of updating your profiles let’s say it is “sporadic”. Your appearance on social networks does not attend planning. Neither do you consider the schedule, rather you do when you remember, or when you have a while. If you publish grapes to pears, your harvest of followers will not only stop growing, but will dry, until disappearing.

You do not think before you speak. This maxim, so common in real life, is also of vital application in Social Media. You can not say everything that comes to you, without stopping to meditate on your convenience, or if you use the right words to express yourself. The written medium can be very cold, even your words can lead to misunderstanding. At the time of publishing, take care of your language, value the appropriateness of your message and read your writing twice before sending it.

You do not optimize the content of your posts. You say the same thing on all social platforms, regardless of when and how you say it. Use your own language in each medium, and please do not replicate the same message on all social networks. The hashtags distort on Facebook; Your Facebook comments appear cut on Twitter? Why create that bad taste in the users? In addition if you publish at the right time, choosing the right place, with a timely comment or phrase, you can generate engagement and encourage participation, increasing the virality of your message.

Words, words, and more words. It shows facts, not words; Or what comes to be the same: promises fulfilled. Leave aside the corporate discourse, forget the dissertations about the thousand and one advantages of your wonderful product. Invite your audience to try it out, offer a discount and encourage them to talk about the benefits of your creations. Your profiles will gain in relevance and will arouse public interest.

Give up the word. Social networks are not a stage for the monologue, but a space open to conversation. Give free rein to the free interaction between your brand and the users; Worry about your interests, attend to your requests. Create a living environment, where you want to spend a lot of time and share with you.

You monopolize the conversation. If you only talk about yourself, you will end up getting bored, they will run away from you. Your performances in Social Media can not revolve around you, and your brand. Approach your target audience unpretentiously, as one more member of the community. Interact with your comments, provide useful information that is not directly related to your brand. In this way you will gain their trust and accept you.

You do not bring added value. The content is the king, and you have to pay homage. Your actions in social networks must have quality information, interesting and attractive, that makes it worthwhile to be by your side. If you do not bring anything new, or create a living environment, livened up with promotions and activities, your passage through Social Media will leave no mark.

You always say the same thing. Run away from the path. Awaken your creativity and apply it in your comments, in the type of content, in the way you see yourself. Strive to stand out from the competition, to make a hole in the minds of your users. If he offers nothing different, you will be another; You have to be the only one.

It is not enough to have relevant content, you have to know how to spread it. If you strive to generate quality content, but limit yourself to posting it on your blog and, at the most, make a single mention on your Facebook wall, you are denying yourself the possibility of developing your full potential. It is as if a writer, after performing the hard work of writing his novel, keeps it in a drawer; Or at best he would teach it to his family and friends. Make known the fruit of your effort with a hype. Viralize your content through social networks, send it to content aggregators, send it to your contact list in the form of a newsletter? Maximize the reach of your message.

Delete all comments you do not like. Censorship is the prevailing policy when managing your presence in social networks. Instead, practice dialogue; Be concerned about the real reason for the negative comment; Pull the thread and find out more information about this situation. A complaint can be an opportunity for improvement, as well as a closer bond and loyalty to the client, making him a strong advocate. In any case, do not eliminate the negative comments, unless they are derogatory or bad taste. Precisely the feature that evidences the veracity of the content of a profile is the mixture of positive and neutral content, along with those not so favorable.

You do not follow what the competition does, nor does it seem to matter much to you. The actions of companies in your sector, or similar interests can contribute, and a lot. From here you can draw ideas and identify trends; Which will be useful also to better know your audience.

You do not respond to the comments and interactions of your followers. This medium is ideal for networking, getting to know the interests of your target audience, improving your online reputation, being closer to your customers and even networking. All this is possible, but you must actively participate.

You never thank. In your social networking strategy you can not miss a gesture as simple as being grateful for the mentions, the participation of users in your actions, or a favorable comment. This simple act generates a favorable attitude toward the brand and encourages engagement.

The content of your messages seems to be encrypted. Well because only a shortened url appears, without any other reference or explanation, either because it is a series of emoticons, that do not come to mind, or even leave the phrase half way, so you expect someone to understand you?

The pace of your posts is excessive. Continuously appears in your time line of Facebook some message about your brand, the promotion in force or that discount that should not be missed ?. The frequency of your posts is too intense, and you can tire your followers, who may choose to block them or, in the worst case, stop following you.

You do not monitor the conversation. Do not worry about knowing what is said about you in Social Media, who mentions you, for better or for worse; Or trends in the sector. You live immersed in your world, oblivious to what happens in your immediate environment. Bad mistake. You must follow up closely everything related to your brand or your activity.

You have no ability to react to a compromised situation. You have not considered the possibility of what would happen if ?? Before a crisis of reputation, recognize it, you would be blocked, not knowing what to do. It is essential to have an emergency plan, a series of indications to know “what to do in case of?” In this way you can alleviate in a certain way the repercussion of a negative action, you will be prepared to act.

Your updates on social networks are fully automated. If your actions in Social Media are reduced to what a program publishes, the tone of your conversation will be cold, nonexistent. The tools are very useful; They work for you, but they can never substitute you; You must contribute the human value, make comments and personal assessments.

The tone of your conversation sounds like a robot. It brings out your human side, even the programmed messages can have a personal nuance. In your planning you can include a message of good morning, or a question that invites to the answer, of the type what do you think ?? Has it happened to you? In this way the conversation will have another character, it will appear that there is someone on the other side.

Your content is not relevant. In social networks, the expiration date of a message is almost immediately after it has happened. If you publish something that happened yesterday, you will lose credibility before the gallery. Take care of the content of your updates, use really interesting themes; Combine them with recurring topics, from a different point of view, that remain in force longer.

You no longer write in your blog. You have long since abandoned the habit of giving the key, to create articles on that subject that really interested your audience, contributing your personal valuation. Your frenetic pace of life no longer allows you to stop writing; You think that this custom is already a thing of the past. Nothing further from the reality, blogging is one of the most effective activities in Social Media, enjoy great credibility on the part of the audience and helps to increase web traffic.

You do not care about the quality of your sources. When it comes to choosing where to extract content to share on your wall, you look for keywords that more or less fit your interests, but you do not value who is behind the message you are about to replicate. It is not the same to have a source of solvency, to mention a small blog, whose contents leave much to be desired. This impacts directly on the image you project in Social Media.

You have an open account on all social networks that have crossed your path. Even you do not even know what networks you are in, because you have not re-entered many of them. Choose only those that are relevant to your interests and those of your audience, in which you have the capacity to be, where you are in a position to develop an effective brand presence. Where your economic, technical and human resources allow you.

Your main goal is to win followers. Every moment you look at the number of your fans on Facebook, or who has begun to follow you on Twitter. However, you do not pay attention to the amount of interactions generated by your post, the visits that that video has taken to your page, or how many retuits you got your last post.

Your employees are not aware of your company’s Social Media strategy. You have not involved them, they do not participate by contributing their point of view. Your perspective can be very interesting; Are the ones who know your product and your brand better, and can offer valuable information; Are able to detect needs that are invisible before your eyes.

You do not offer customer service through social channels. Your followers come to you, but they feel frustrated, since they do not get any response from you. What deteriorates the image they have of you, and makes them refuse you as a reference and as a company brand.

Do you feel identified with any of these errors? What do you do to correct them