Don’t Make These Social Media Mistakes!

Don’t Make These Social Media Mistakes!

Understanding what NOT to do when it comes to social media is nearly as critical as knowing what you should do. Here are several social media blunders to avoid at all costs!

Jokes in poor taste – It should be obvious, but you need to put on your thinking cap before you tweet, update or post. And above all, don’t try and benefit from someone else’s catastrophe as a way to promote your products or services. While a celebrity death or humiliation might appear to be easy pickings for trending traffic, you can actually end up alienating more people than you attract!

Offensive statements and political rants – Closely connected is the temptation to broadcast your preferences political, social or otherwise, which may well have the misfortune of NOT aligning with those of your clients and customers. Don’t go there! Refrain from sharing anything that might be misunderstood, or you’ll end up scrambling for cover! Once trust is broken, it’s very difficult to rebuild.

Failing to separate your business and personal accounts – Not to mention that it appears far more professional to create a company profile and page, many times there are benefits (depending on the social network) for a purely company account. This is definitely true with Google Local. A public business account will also be more likely to be seen in the search engine results.

No social media buttons on your website – They are readily available for all social media platforms, and you’re shooting yourself in the foot if they are not available on your homepage and every post you make. This will make it easy for your readers to share your posts and in doing so help promote your business.

Not using the links from your social sites – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google all will let you link back to your website from your profile page, as well as from posts. This is an great way to obtain some easy, authoritative links that will help others find you as well.