Boo! 12 Social Media Tricks to Avoid

1. Jumping on a trending topic/meme/hashtag without doing research beforehand. Find out what the image, hashtag, or topic is about; how it aligns with your brand, and; how it could be construed by your audience.
2. Posting with typos and grammatical mistakes or abbreviations could be misinterpreted.
3. Confusing company accounts with personal accounts and posting on the wrong one. Using a scheduling tool can help you avoid making this mistake.
4. Sounding too salesy. Pushing promotions and sales content often will sour your audience and potential clients.
5. Ignoring comments is bad business. Social media is about engagement and creating relationships. Responding to people’s comments builds relationships social media users seek.
6. Being active on too many social media platforms. Identify where your target market is active and focus your efforts there.
7. Buying followers could be ghastly. Sure, it might increase followers, but ROI will be the casualty.
8. Neglecting a variety of media in your posts. Mixing media helps to create interest in your posts and keeps followers engaged.
9. Presenting an impersonal profile. Social media users want to engage with a human, not robots. Make your posts relatable, fun, and friendly.
10. Doing everything yourself. Finding the right help can make all the difference in your social media efforts. Social media may be free, but it’s time consuming, takes energy, and requires creativity. If you’re lacking in any of those areas, consider outsourcing this task.
11. Posting only your own content. It may sound counter intuitive, but sharing other people’s content demonstrates the “social” aspect of social media. It also broadens your brand reach.
12. Forgetting to listen. The more active your brand becomes the more people will talk about it. Create a Google Alert to receive notifications whenever your brand is mentioned online. If you’re using a scheduling tool, you can establish triggers for your brand, products, or services. You can even “listen” for the competition.

What can you do to avoid these blunders?

• Prepare a social media content schedule. Define the day(s) of the week and time(s) of day you will post. Remember, you can post content more than once in a month, e.g., in the morning one week and again in the evening 15 – 20 days later. Use a different image and headline for each post to draw in more readers.
• Create a short list of hashtags, such as #Accounting, #Bookkeeping, #SmallBusiness, #Finance, #Audit, #ERISA, #ConstructionFinance, and more. A tool like RiteTag is great for developing the list. Then use up to three hashtags in a post. Instagram is the exception. You can add up to 11 hashtags effectively.
• Develop a monthly content theme to focus your efforts, e.g., January is financial planning. February is tax tips. March is employee classification, etc.
• Look at trending topics and search your website content to see if you have something to share. Be sure to use the trending topic hashtag. Word to the wise: monitor trend throughout the day to ensure it doesn’t impact your brand.
• Use a graphics tool and/or royalty-free image site to help you build stand-out images and video that can go with your posts. Canva.com and Pixabay.com are terrific resources.

Social media doesn’t have to be scary. By mixing a potion of entertainment with education, you are providing valuable information in a way that makes people want to come back for more.