When it comes to social media marketing, there are certain things that brands just shouldn’t do.
There’s no doubt that the glimmering promise of fortune is tempting.
But, the reality is, by succumbing to temptation you could be damaging your brand in the process.
We take a look at 7 of the deadliest sins brands can commit on social media.
1. Lust: paying for followers.
Your follower growth on social is slow, and you struggle to gain traction on your posts thanks to all the algorithms in place. You’re thinking that boosting your page with a few bought followers could make your brand more appealing and in turn help you gain organic followers.
We’ve spoken about buying social media followers before; it’s a no, a definite no. Buying followers lends itself to all kinds of problems, some of them are irreparable. Fake followers don’t engage with your page, so the algorithms won’t improve, and people will question why you suddenly have so many followers that don’t engage with your page. Your credibility as a brand will go down the drain.
2. Sloth: same content, different platform.
Treating all your social media platforms the same is the epitome of laziness. Each social platform is unique; they offer different things that appeal to different people.
Your brand’s message needs to reflect the platform that it’s posted on, and appeal to the audience that uses that platform. For instance, LinkedIn is better suited for longer articles for B2B brands and less frequent posts. Whereas on Twitter, brands would share content and engage in conversations with their customers and industry leaders many times during the day.
It is important to tailor your messages for the platform and audience that is on it. Besides this, if people in your audience are on multiple platforms do you honestly think they want to see a carbon copy of your brand’s message posted on each of them? Don’t practice the sin of sloth.
3. Gluttony: don’t spam.
Quit with trying to sell your service or product on social. The content you post on your social platforms needs to be useful to your audience, whether it’s information based or entertainment based it needs to fill a purpose.
Filling the feeds of your audience with junk such as click-bait links and sales pitches is not a good way to go about building relationships with your audience, which after all is what social is all about. The same is true for posting things that are irrelevant and salesy on other people’s feed or commenting inappropriately to gain attention.
4. Pride: Hey stranger, do our marketing for us!
You’ve got a great product, your brand is awesome, you just need people to know. How about asking our audience to share our posts with their network and getting them to share, and…think how many people could see our awesome brand!
Hmmm, maybe not. Enter the sin of Pride.
First of all, your audience to needs to be customers before they become a brand advocate that spreads the word about your awesomeness. Build a relationship with them, and they will happily do it of their own accord.
It’s great to be confident and proud of what you’ve created, but you need to put your ego aside on social media. Blatantly asking your audience to promote your brand is not cool.
5. Greed: We want you to like us and buy something too.
If you’re going to advertise on social media, make sure you are doing it with purpose. Once again, leave your ego at the door. Self-promotion falls thin on most people. We all want things, but we’d rather not be sold to, especially on social media.
Talk to your audience, build relationships and a community of followers. Rather than going for the hard sell, show them how your product or service is going to benefit them. What problem is it going to solve for them?
6. Envy: I want to be popular too!
Trends are a great way to join the conversation. It is an opportunity for brands to be noticed and potentially gain traction. But if you’re going to embrace topics and hashtags of popular trends make sure they are relevant to your brand or can be related the industry you are in otherwise you are going to look rather stupid.
Stop looking over your shoulder at others. The sin of envy is not good for social media.
7. Wrath: using social to vent emotions.
People will push our buttons from time to time. Irate customers complaining about the service they didn’t receive; the pesky troll that follows us around seeing if we’ll rise to their bait. But don’t take it as an indication to yell and scream louder and louder.
Being angry and going on a big rant on social media is a big fail for brands. Your fans will walk away. Yes, we are human and have emotions. Get yourself a punching bag, keep if off the Twitter feed.
