Things you Need to Immediately Stop Doing on the Social Media Accounts

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Social media accounts became one of the most important assets of any company nowadays. They are monitored and fed on a daily basis so to keep the target audience engaged and our brand awareness on a top level. And, in order to get it done, the norm is to try and test any possible strategy that might keep our metrics increasing.

The only problem with this approach is that you might be doing things that aren’t helping you to achieve your goals. More than that, some of them might even be making your favorite numbers fall down the road. So to avoid that you continue walking on this dangerous path, check these 6 things that you must stop doing on your business’ social media accounts right now.

1- Sending unsolicited invitations to like your page

It doesn’t take a genius to imagine the reason behind it. And yet this is one of the most common practices on Facebook. You create your page, and then you start asking people around to like it completely aimlessly.

Of course, no harm is done if you are asking a favor to your parents and siblings. Or even to your closest friends. But begging on people’s News Feed will not only be annoying but will make people think that the content or the product that you are offering isn’t good enough.

2 – Buying likes and followers

If begging for likes and followers is bad, you can guess how buying them makes you look like. This is cheating, period. But this is just the first thing to say about it.

When you buy likes and followers, you increased one single metric, the total number of likes and followers. But they will not add value to your product, they won’t comment on your page, and they certainly won’t buy anything from you. So what is the return that you actually get from it in the end?

3 – Adding people to groups without their permission

Picture this. You check your Facebook account in the morning and find out that you got mysteriously added to a group that you have never heard before. Your News Feed is populated by conversations that you have never signed for as well. Throw in there maybe a couple of Friend Requests from people you never heard about. How does it sound?

So put yourself in your target audience’s shoes and never add them to any group without their permission. Even if they were interested in what you have to say or sell, they might change their minds immediately, creating the opposite effect to you were expecting.

4 – Saying happy birthday. And nothing else.

It is that kind of thing. Except for LinkedIn, social media specialized in professional affairs, all other networks available were created with the purpose to connect people. Businesses got there later, because they saw a marketing opportunity and because the network itself need some cash so to survive.

Having said that, you can understand why you can’t have it both ways. Or you keep it strictly professional and don’t try to charm your way to your client’s mind, or you try a more emotional strategy, in which you create some unique and meaningful text to each one of them to congratulate their birthdays – not just a template, or a couple of empty words.

5 – Not adapting your post to your social media network

If you are one of those that connect your Facebook and Twitter account together, so what you write in one is automatically posted in the other, stop doing it right now. As you might not have noticed, these platforms have two very different approaches, starting from how their news feed look like and ending with what you should or shouldn’t write there.

Just to keep it simple and scary, have you ever checked how your long Facebook post looks like on your the 140-characters-only Twitter account? Or the other way around? I bet you haven’t, otherwise, you wouldn’t be doing it.

6 – Prioritizing pictures on Facebook

Another mistake that you might not be aware of is regarding prioritizing images on Facebook. You might think that this is the best thing to do, as people love to check and share images on social media, and this is true. Plus, it makes your ad more visible on their News Feed – also true.

The problem here is that you only get to the point when what was said above becomes an advantage after you actually manage to be seen on their News Feed.

And due to the volume of posts fighting for the same space what you need is to convince Facebook algorithm that your content is relevant – and it uses as criteria not only the quality of your images, but also the text and the link added – so they also should be taken into consideration and deserve the same attention from you.

In Conclusion

If you want to be sure that all effort that you make is correct, so you can get the best from your social media accounts, you will have to keep one eye on what you are doing.

Unconsciously or because you are following the wrong advice, you might be ruining your strategy, so stay alert. And a good way to avoid falling into this trap is following your metrics closely, so you can spot what is not going well as soon as it happens.

So start now a check-up of your social media strategy, and see if you are making any of these mistakes above. If you are, don’t even waste your time upsetting yourself, just fix them immediately so to have better results.

This article is written by Luisa Brenton. She is a blogger. She was born in Italy, graduated from The St. Louis School of Milan and went to Chicago to pursue higher education at the Chicago's Public Research University. Luisa is interested in modern literature and journalisml. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.