These days, anyone and everyone feels that they are qualified to offer their own 2 cents on social media management.
Therefore, if you’re looking for social media management advice, be careful about who you choose to trust.
To help you avoid some of the most common mistakes when using social media management for small businesses, here are 4 pieces of awful social media management advice you should ignore:
1. You need to have a presence on as many social media channels as possible.
This is one of the most popular misunderstandings out there, and it will actually do your business more harm than good.
It can be so tempting to launch your business on every social media platform known to man; however, you’ll be spreading yourself too thin, which makes effective social media management nearly impossible.
As a rule of thumb, if your targeted audience is not using a social network, there is no sense in your business having a presence on that site.
If you’re overwhelmed about which social media sites your business should be using, start with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
These 3 social networking sites have massive audiences that span many demographics and industries.
2. Take advantage of popular hashtags to maximize exposure for your brand.
Yes, embracing trending hashtags can help your business get more exposure on social networking sites. However, proceed with caution!
Some of the biggest social media blunders made by major brands happened due to hashtag misuse.
If you’re going to use a hashtag, take the time to research how it’s being used first.
Not only should it be relevant to your brand, but you should also consider all of the ways that it could be interpreted by your audience.
3. Save time by auto-publishing your content to all social networks at once.
There are so many social media management tools out there that claim to be able to save your business a tremendous amount of time.
One of the biggest gimmicks that business owners have bought into is auto-publishing content to all social networks at once.
This is a huge no-no!
If you have a presence on a variety of social networks, you’ll know that the types of content shared on these sites and the way that it’s shared is very different from platform to platform.
For example, if you share a post from Facebook to Twitter that has over 140 characters, the post will not appear correct on Twitter.
Also, the way that users engage and interact with content also varies on each social media network.
While auto-blasting your content to all social media networks may sound like a great idea, be sure that your auto-publisher has the ability to make content appear natively posted on each platforms.
4. Protect your brand’s image by deleting negative comments.
One common objection to brands joining social media is the fear of receiving negative feedback for all to see.
Some feel that an easy fix is to delete these comments.
Don’t fall prey to this horrible advice.
People want to do business with brands they trust.
Quickly deleting negative comments will make your company appear as non-transparent with its audience.
Instead, use negative feedback as an opportunity to build trust and credibility with your audience.
You can do this by using social media management tools to promptly address negative comments and find a professional way to resolve the issue.
Ultimately, your goal should be to retain the customer and have him or her follow up the negative comment with a positive one about how you satisfactorily resolved the situation.
For more mistakes to avoid, be sure to read our recent blog post that shares 10 signs you’re using social media management for small business completely wrong.
