When it comes to social media marketing it seems as though there are a million things to remember; an endless list of details that go in to every post and hacks and tips to improve your marketing through social media channels. It can be overwhelming and time consuming to run through a never ending checklist which comes from the endless stream of tips and advice. And how do you know which advice to listen to and which to ignore? Some advice seems to completely contradict other advice and everyone online is a self-proclaimed expert making it difficult to tell the “I read a marketing book once” types from those with years of experience and results behind them. Thankfully we are going to make your list of social hacks a little shorter in this post of common social media advice to ignore.
Cross-Posting
As you will see with several items on this list people seem to think social media takes too long and so look for shortcuts and hacks to cut down on time. Of these time saving hacks one of the biggest culprits is cross platform sharing. Whilst there is utility in automatically sharing posts from one platform to another the content doesn’t always translate well. Character limits, required image sizes and a slew of other differences between platforms often leave your posts looking out of place. Take the time to optimise your posts for the specific platform and the audience on that platform. What works on Instagram is different to what works on twitter. Nobody wants to see your tweet which just links to an Instagram post or the Facebook post taken from Instagram which is littered with hashtags and says “link in the bio”. Particularly bad cases of this are when a company uses an Instagram post as a Facebook ad and instead of a clickable button to their website they are spending money telling people to go to a link in a bio which doesn’t exist.
Buying Followers and Likes
Please stop buying likes and followers. Thankfully this advice only seems to come from those who clearly have no idea what they are doing rather than some of the fake experts that are little better at pulling the wool over people’s eyes. However, even these fakers still manage to fool some people into thinking buying followers is a good idea. If your followers are fake how could they possibly buy from you or have anything of value to offer. They won’t share your content with anyone and they won’t give you feedback. At best they will inflate you ego leading you to never actually improving your content because you cannot tell what actually works with real followers. If you think the inflated number of likes on a post will encourage more real people to also like your posts as these fake experts claim then you are likely in for a shock. Instagram are set to make the like counter invisible to users in the feed. There is nothing to be gained from buying fake followers except recourse from the social network you are trying to “growth hack” and the distrust of savvy users tat see through your ruse.
Automating Everything
Scheduling content to go out at times you are unable to post is definitely useful. In fact, batching creating content and scheduling for a week is possibly highly efficient. However you cannot rely solely on scheduling content. The “set it and forget it” mentality will not work in creating real social media growth. Social media as the name suggests is social and therefore requires real interaction. Responding to comments and engaging with your community is important. Also by neglecting to be active in real time on social media your ability to be topical and join in topical conversations is limited. Being present on social media in real-time is the best way to start and engage in authentic conversation. It is hard to be topical and relevant if you are constantly planning a week or several into the future with your content without also tempering it with real time interaction and posts.
For many of our readers the advice in this post seems obvious. However, this post was for the few people that have been misled often by a pretend expert offering half-baked ideas so that when it doesn’t work they can sell you their course for “guaranteed social media success”, spoilers; the course will be filled with equally useless “advice”. When it comes to marketing your business speak to real experts with proven track records. For advice from practitioners who know what it takes to drive business success though digital marketing explore the rest of our blog posts.
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