The Worst Social Media Practices to Avoid

social1

The value of your reputation as a brand cannot be overstated. With the reach and prevalence of social media as a tool for brand marketing, the importance of your brand’s reputation has soared beyond normal perception. Everything you do on the internet can quickly and significantly harm your brand, which is why great care should be taken into every little detail of your online activity.

 

Social media has proven to be a great avenue for brands to grow. The high active user numbers, diverse demographic interest, heavy interest in brands and ease of access has made it a great marketing too. With social media, your brand is able to access firsthand your potential audiences. The platform’s ability to provide personal selling has been a major selling point for brands. However, the increased visibility provided by quick access to large user numbers can just as well be a Trojan horse.

A simple mistake could take down even the largest organizations. It necessitates that brands scrutinize all their activity carefully to ensure that they do not cause their reputation any harm. If you are looking to engage in sustained and valuable social media activity, here are a few mistakes that you should avoid on the platform.

Choosing quantity over quality

Do you have enough numbers to handle social media activity across multiple platforms? Before setting up your social media pages, you need to determine whether or not you can comfortably manage social media activity. But what does social media activity entail? Alongside sharing content regularly, your brand also needs to provide timely and professional responses to users who are interested in engagement. This means responding to comments and queries as soon as possible. If your team is understaffed, you may be forced to compromise on the quality and efficiency of your interaction. This could affect users’ ability to trust your brand in future interaction, which may limit your ability to grow and attract more followers.

 

 

Failing to add relevant information

social2

Virtually anyone can set up a social media page account for any other person and brand on the social media. The popularity of parody pages across multiple platforms is a great example of this. So how will users be able to identify your brand? How will they trust you to actually be your own representatives, as opposed to an anonymous page on their platform of interest? In order to overcome this, you need to provide sufficient information that can help them definitively identify your brand. So how can you do this? You could consider adding location information and a full selection of your contact details, allowing users to contact you off social media as well. If you do this across multiple social media platforms, user confidence in your brand will be poised to increase.

 

 

Ignoring user interaction

social3

Social media is a public space. Its rise in popularity has affected its perception and user. Many more people are looking to social media as a tool for effective customer service, considering it quicker and more efficient than traditional phone lines. The rise in brand interest on the avenue, which has recently overshadowed celebrity interest, suggests that this is set to be a mainstay feature. Brands that do not offer great customer service could come off as uninterested in the plight of their customers. In order to maintain a great reputation, brands should consider creating a framework that facilitates quick and solution-oriented social media interaction with followers. This will maintain a great reputation and improve the likelihood that users can trust your brand.

 

 

Failing to target a niche audience

social4

There are too many people on social media. While this may make the platform appealing for its marketing potential, it could also affect the likelihood of success of these efforts.In order to stand a chance of success, brands need to be able to narrow down their efforts to suit a niche audience. Setting out and understanding your business goal is crucial for any business strategy. It will involve a desired target group, who will offer maximum benefit in relation to this goal.In order to increase the likelihood of success, a brand should be able to design their efforts for maximum impact with this group. By failing to appeal to a specific audience, a brand could be forced into social media limbo, where it shows some popularity which does not necessarily translate into tangible results.

 

 

Failing to monitor content

social5

You could be risking your brand’s reputation if you do not have a content strategy that points your social media team in the direction of your expectations.While natural and improvised content could prove to be successful, it offers a high risk to such a sensitive matter. You need to check up on your posts to make sure they meet certain standards. You can do this by training your social media team on what to post, as well as putting content ideas through thorough scrutiny to determine safe and viable options. This will protect you from a negative reaction, which could have far reaching consequences on your reputation. You may put any content ideas through a sample group to get a first hand view of the most likely reaction, which may then shape your decision.To address the delay that this may cause, you could develop content well in advance. You may even use a scheduling tool such as HootSuite to make sure that your brand activity levels are maintained.

Final thought

Social media has been billed as the premier marketing avenue for brands, and rightly so. It combines heavy brand interest with high user numbers, and additional beneficial features such as paid targeting options.These paid advertisement tools, such as auto Instagram views, could help you negotiate even the toughest social terrain. On social media, you can grow your brand. However, you can also damage it if you do not engage in the right measures. This framework is designed to help you address these likely mistakes and maximize the potential benefit to your brand.With our help, you should be able to keep your reputation in check and benefit your brand.