We always talk about how to get more followers on social media and how to capitalize on those connections, but the same amount of thought should go into follower retention. While it’s important to be consistently active across various social media platforms, some faux pas can prove to be annoying and actually drive customers away. Here are a few bad social media habits that small businesses should stay away from:
- Too Much Selling: Social media is about conversation so to be always selling is the online version of that guy at the party who keeps telling everyone how great he is. It’s totally normal to advertise sales and your business overall on social media, it is a marketing platform after all. However, mix in other content and engage with your customer base and others in your industry.
- Overposting: Repetitive posts may be the quickest way to get unfollowed, as it starts to look like spam. It depends on the platform, but keep posting down to once or twice a day (different rules apply to Twitter where you can post a dozen times per day, as long as it’s interesting to your target audience). This is especially true with reposting, which is often viewed as digital clutter.
- Being Boring: Although it’s a good idea to retweet or share content on social media, that should be kept down to once every few days. The primary goal is to develop engaging content that will make your customers want to follow you and see your company pop up in their feed. Keeping a blog on your site is a great way to generate ongoing content that can be pushed on social media.
- Being Aloof: A big part of social media is getting people to listen to you, but the other side of that is listening. To run effective social media campaigns and develop a smart strategy, you have to pay attention to what your customers are doing. This means reaching out to customers and asking questions, and more importantly answering questions (and addressing concerns) in a timely manner. The goal is to drive up engagement – quality over quantity. Thousands of followers are useless unless you are putting the connections to work.
