10 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid in 2022
To make the most of your presence on social media, you should be posting consistently and with value. Your followers should want to see what you’re sharing on social media, and engage with the content too. Simply posting the odd photo here and there, and resharing the occasional tweet isn’t enough. To thrive online, you need to have a strategy in place, with tactics that take you to your goal.
As an individual or brand, if you’re reading tips online for what to do to make social media work, that’s great! However, it’s also good to be aware of the things you should avoid doing online.
To better understand these mistakes, we’ve split them by social media channel for you.
So, here are 10 social media mistakes that you should avoid in 2022.
Not responding to negative comments
Believe it or not, when you receive a negative comment online, you should see this as an opportunity, rather than a burden. This is an opportunity for you to show your excellent customer service.
If a visitor has taken the time to leave a bad review, they are clearly upset. This is a chance to make them feel valued. Take the time to show you understand the issue and why they are upset, and offer a solution. This is where it should end for the public eye, though. At this point, invite the visitor to send you a direct message to resolve the issue.
By displaying this attitude and willingness to improve your service, your community will be grateful, and your brand perception will be a positive one.
Marketing to the wrong audience
If you want to grow on social media, you must market to the correct audience. Sharing content for an audience you think is listening when in reality, it isn’t, is a waste of your time.
Utilise the analytics suites offered by all social media platforms. This allows you to understand who your audience is. Furthermore, you will be able to see what content is most appreciated, which helps you marketing strategy going forward.
Not completing your page information
Your Facebook “about” section is a great opportunity to project the key details about your brand online. This is where users can see the best contact information, open times and office address.
By keeping this up to date, it shows you are active online and care about your digital presence. To leave it out of date would be a mistake, as it portrays an inactive, out of touch brand.
Not using hashtags
Hashtags are widely used to promote a product or service on Instagram and have been for many years. If you haven’t been including hashtags, you’re missing out!
When you tap on a hashtag, it takes you to a thread of posts that use the hashtag. This exposes your content to a wider audience! By not using hashtags, you’re impacting your own brand awareness, and therefore a big mistake you should avoid is not using hashtags.
Buying followers
Having thousands of followers is not the be all and end all. The old saying “quality over quantity” is completely right for social media. Would you rather 5,000 followers, but only 5 of them like your posts? Or, 500 followers and 300+ like your posts? The second option, right?
Buying followers might be a temptation, but it has consequences further down the line. If you’re measuring your engagement rates, and the majority of your followers don’t engage with your content, the results will be saddening.
Instead, earn followers organically!
Not using stories
Wow. Could Instagram have given us something better? Stories are incredible. The story appears at the top of all user’s feeds, and has plenty of functionality! You can provide external links, polls, mentions, locations and much more!
The original Instagram post doesn’t allow for clickable links in the captions. Therefore, you should be utilising the stories functionality.
If you want to increase your brand’s popularity, use stories.
A boring “about” summary
The “about” summary is a chance to talk about what you do and why you do it. Don’t be dull, instead let positivity and passion shine through! Talk about the services and products you offer, but most importantly why, and how it helps the target audience.
Boring tone of voice
When posting content on social media, it’s important to be unique. To be your own brand. This can be done with branding, but also a tone of voice. Once you’ve established your tone of voice, use it! It will separate you from your competitors and enable you to stand out. LinkedIn is mistakenly assumed to be a platform of formality. This isn’t the case. Instead, use this platform to make your brand stand out.
Not responding to mentions
It may seem like hassle, but if someone has taken the time to mention you or your business, respond!
You can potentially retweet this content, if necessary. If you don’t respond, it looks as though you have poor customer service. This is not how you will want to be portrayed.
Too many retweets
Retweets are fine. We’re not suggesting that you stop retweeting altogether. However, every retweet should be related to the industry you’re in. Use retweets when someone is mentioning you or the business, or if the information you’re sharing will be valued by the audience.
It’s crucial to avoid having a feed full of retweets, as you need your own voice to be heard.
Summary
If you can avoid making these mistakes on your individual or company page, you’re on the right track. With this said, don’t be afraid to try new things online. You don’t know what works for you until you try it. Just know, though, that it is none of the points above - make sure you avoid them!
