While several individuals use social media for just talking to your friends, being in the marketing industry, I use social media for work. Every day, I am on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Mostly, just Twitter. Often times, I run into several people a day who are doing social media completely wrong, and I’ll tell you why.
You’re mass-adding people who don’t care
This is one that irritates me intensely. Throughout my day, I get notifications on my phone about a new follower on Twitter from people who have never, and will never actually interact with me or care at all about what I post. These people are just looking to get me to follow them back.
The great thing about Twitter, is that I can see who you follow and how many people you follow. If I see that you are following 20,000 people, there isn’t a slight chance that you will see anything I post, thus, I have no benefit from you following me at all nor will the chances of me following you have any value.
Most of these people are people that call themselves “social media experts” and will just blast you with content without any type of personal interaction which brings me to my next point:
Do not tweet/post too much
If you fill my news feed with worthless garbage articles on how I can “improve my business”, I will most likely unfollow you. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if you post an article or two, or even maybe post every few hours, but my feed already takes a while to dig through and I don’t want to see 100 of them an hour from your posts and promotional retweets. There is a time and place for your in-your-face marketing tactics and my news feed is not one of them.
Social media is about interaction, not your billboard
Do not just blast your content out there with scheduled posts and ignore your interaction. Engaging with your followers is quite possibly the most important thing about social media. Positive engagements using replies and retweets/shares will make your followers feel as if you care what they are saying.
Not only should you be responding to their engagement, but you should also be looking through your feed of who you are following for things you are able to reply to. Actively engaging with your followers and those that you follow will dramatically increase your influence and relationships with them. Never be afraid to go away from your niche. If someone posts a picture of their cat, they’re obviously proud of it and want you to recognize it. Never miss a good opportunity to make a relationship that that individual.
In conclusion…
Stop being a robotic billboard. Know your audience and engage with people who have similar interests. Stop being spammy and provide relevant content to those who enjoy it. Following these rules will sure increase your relationship with the social media universe.