While there certainly is a lot of leeway in the world of social media marketing for different techniques and platforms, it seems like what you don’t do is as important as what you do.

Making mistakes on social media can cost you followers and engagement, and ultimately, sales. I often am asked to do assessments on client’s social media profiles, and it’s surprising how often I see different people making exactly the same mistakes.

Here are some things you should avoid while doing your social media marketing:

Consistency is the key. I’ve said this a million times, but it bears repeating: the main key to social media success is consistency. That means showing up on whatever platform you choose to participate in (ideally the same one where your audience/clients are) regularly. Every day. And generating content for it. And engaging with others on it.

Talking about yourself all the time. Have you ever been on a date with someone where all they did was talk about themselves? How boring! You’d never go out a second time with someone like that, and the same rule applies to social media. I get that your business is important to you, and you want to tell people about your sales and your daily specials. But really, who cares?? You need to bring value to your audience, not just try to sell them stuff all the time, or brag about how awesome you are. Repurpose your content for each platform so that it smoothly fits in with the native content there.

Automation. If you are auto-posting from one platform to another to save time, I have news for you! While  yes, it may save you time, this is a terrible practice. It makes you look lazy or uniformed, and I’m not sure which one is worse. Stop autoposting. It’s my mission in life… I should say that there is a difference between scheduling tweets or FB posts to go out during the day. This is a much more acceptable practice, as long as you are also still monitoring your feeds for feedback and responses.

Being oblivious to what’s happening in the world. A couple years back, when the Boston Marathon was bombed, and more recently during the Paris attacks, I stopped all my scheduled tweets from going out. I turned them off. Truthfully, Twitter doesn’t need to see my tweets about social media tools or marketing in that moment. They need the airwaves for basic news and safety. Worse yet, there are many examples of businesses that scheduled tweets and then a disaster happened at their own event. Check out this post about a RadioHead concert epic Twitter fail that happened a couple years back in Toronto. This is scheduling and automation gone really, really wrong.

Not being human. People buy from people, not corporations or robots. So be personable. Talk people up. Strike up conversations. Make jokes. Humans buy from other humans, so prove you’re human.

Verbal diarrhea. There are many twitter accounts that just spew whatever thought is currently in their heads. If you’re a person, that’s on you (although don’t expect me to follow you), but if you’re a business, that’s not okay. Your tweets need to be on brand. Sure, they can be funny or relatable or whatever, just make sure they are on topic and on brand and add value to the conversation.

Not learning from analytics. Stats have a lot to teach you–regularly make time to check them out and see what  you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and learn from both.

Now, here’s today’s infographic: 15 Ways to Fail at Social Media Marketing.

Infographic courtesy of Inklyo.