10 Social Media Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Brand

10 Social Media Mistakes that can Ruin Your Brand

Social media is one of those things which can have a double standard if you are not careful enough. There are always two sides to something, and you are bound to find supporters and haters of each and everything which are posting online. This may be a little less for you and me individually, but this combination of good and bad responses can hurt brands more. The brands which I am talking about here are companies as well as celebrities which have become the center of attention for most people out there. It is absolutely crucial that a brand has its Social Media game on point so that it increases its followers and reach more people both online and offline.

Social media for a brand is not just a place to post the latest updates and ‘like’ things so that its followers would know what the brand is doing. It is a collaboration of many Do’s and Don’ts carefully studied as implied. Here are some of the Social Media mistakes that most people do:

 

  1. More is not always better

 

It is a general misconception that if you want to market to more people at once, you should have more than one Social media account. But think of it like this, if you are a customer of some company then would you like it if you see the same ad wherever you go like on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram etcetera. The brand should prioritize which social media platform they have to choose. Maybe a comparison of every platform could be made at the beginning, but after some research, a brand should focus on the social media platform which gets them the highest audiences and try to improve on that. So, avoid this first point among the social media mistakes.

 

2. Keep a Schedule

 

10 Social Media Mistakes that can Ruin Your Brand

People who have nothing better to do a post on social media whenever they want. It’s not like they have a code to follow. This doesn’t apply to companies, however. They have a reputation to uphold and should be consistent in order to appeal to the viewers. A viewer or follower won’t be loyal if he doesn’t know what to expect from the brand he is following. One post comes today, and the next comes after two weeks followed by another the next day and then again, the brand falls into obscurity, this behaviour will hamper any publicity it is trying to achieve.

 

3. A little negativity can make you better

 

Another point among social media mistakes is negativity. There is a difference between negative comments and negative feedbacks. Comments are just words posted by your haters and people who always have something bad to say about everything. Feedbacks, however, are suggestions which are sometimes sugar-coated and most of the time aren’t but you should not take negative feedbacks lightly. Viewers can differentiate between a negative comment and negative feedback, and if you never respond to negative feedbacks then your popularity will decrease, and you will build a reputation of ignoring customers and are not open to suggestions. You don’t have to respond to all feedbacks, just those which are practical and can help you in the long run.

 

4. Never bore your Followers

 

No one likes to see the same thing over and over again and that’s another one of the most important social media mistakes. Keeping Star Wars aside, this is the age where people get bored easily and don’t want to spend their time on the same thing, so a brand should try to avoid posting similar contents or links over and over. This will make the viewer feel like your brand lacks creativity and imagination. Always manage your content, if you have a lot of good content at once then save some content for the times when it is needed the most. Overload of content is also harmful. Hire some creative writers to come up with some great new ideas and articles or videos or posts to keep the audience engaged. If it does come down to it, then try to repeat a content which was posted a long time ago.

 

5. Stop with the frequent Posts

 

Yeah, people get it. You are a new brand trying to make your mark in the world and are excited to reach as many users possible in the shortest time. There are various ways to do that other than unloading a sea of FB posts or tweets or Instagram photos. We have a very small attention span and too much information at one place at a time feels clustered and is often ignored. Some people even get irritated from these frequent posts and tend to leave your brand. No, that’s not good for business, is it? 

 

6. Don’t pretend to be a Joker

 

Humour is good. It brings you closer to your followers and viewers. They start to feel more connected to you and start to trust you and your jokes, but that doesn’t mean that you have the right to make jokes anytime and your followers will like it. There is always conflicts in the thinking of peoples and what your brand finds cheeky or hilarious can mean totally different for some people. Just take the Jack & Jones advertisement in which Ranveer Singh has a girl on his shoulders, and the tagline reads “Don’t hold back, Take your work home”. While this might have seemed funny to the people over at Jack & Jones, it didn’t resonate well with the people and they facing huge criticism over the ad.

 

7. Jumping on the Trend Wagon

 

Seeing your name or something you are connected to, in the trending corner of twitter and Facebook may seem like a huge achievement, and trust me it is, but there are a certain protocol and code of ethics which should be followed to come to the top trending spots. Relentlessly spamming your customers and online followers with irrelevant messages and over using the hashtag (#) before everything so that it becomes trending is not the way to go. If you have to use hashtags, then use the hashtags which are relevant to your posts or your brand or the current marketing strategy you are implementing.

 

8. Images

 

The text is slowly getting out of fashion for the internet. Rather than reading long and boring posts people look for images which have something written on it. This is a great social media marketing technique, and if your brand is not using images to promote the business, then it is missing out on something really great. Using attractive images in a meme style to deliver a short but interesting message attracts the reader to read the story further. If they like it then sharing an image easier as compared to sharing texts which lose their appeal if the reader is not in the mood for reading, no matter how great it is written

 

9. Follow the Followers

 

A brand should never ignore its followers as it is one of the biggest social media mistakes. No matter how big your brand has become, always remember that once it was just a small enterprise trying to make a name for itself and it was those followers who kept you afloat and popular so that your brand can become this big now. If user comments on something, respond to them as best you can, if someone asks a question or raises any query then try to answer it as soon as possible. Acknowledge the compliment someone gives you and thank them for their support. It gives you important respects points in the eyes of both the new users and the existing ones which keep track of your generosity.

 

10. Profile updates

 

Since it is a Social media profile, it needs constant updates and touchups. Just like you change your own profile photos and cover photos from time to time, you have to change the profile photos and cover for your brand too. Keep it in accordance with your brand or the latest happenings around the world. This is not a one-time thing where you choose the logo of your company as your profile photo as well as cover photo and forget about it. People need to know that there is a human behind the account.