Social media has come a long, long way. Way back, 10 years ago, when I first started dipping my toes in these waters, it was a very different situation. Social media was thought of as mostly for fun, not for business, but boy has that changed.

If you still think of social media as something “fun,” you’re not wrong. But there is also a lot of money to make and be made out there as well.

Here are some of the Social Media Marketing Sins I still see so many people out there committing:

1. No strategy. Or Stragedy, as we like to call it around here. These are the folks who go “oh, hey–this Facebook thing seems to be something, I should put my business on there.” And they get an account, but quickly lose momentum because they have no content strategy or idea what they are doing. Learn. Educate yourself. Take a class (I teach them!). Read good blogs. Then implement those ideas.
2. Too fast, too far, too soon. Many people think, “I have to be on ALL the platforms,” and honestly, this is crazy-making. Choose the platforms where your audience is first, and build up your knowledge and following. Once you have those under control, you can begin to add in other platforms as needed.
3. Buying Followers. Just say no. I mean, I get it. I understand wanting to take a shortcut; getting organic followers takes time. Plus, there’s social proof, right? If you have 10,000 followers, then organic followers will follow, right? Maybe. But your engagement rates will also suck, and anyone who dives a little deeper on your profile will know it. Also, you’ll never sell anything to any of those fake followers.
4. Talking about yourself all the time. Let’s say you go on a date with someone. They spend the entire night talking about themselves, and they never let you get a word in, or ask you a question about yourself. Are you going on a second date? Nope. That person is self-involved and boring as hell. As a business, don’t talk about yourself all the time. Take an interest in your clients and potential clients–how can you help them and make their lives easier?
5. #Hashtag #Overuse. Ugh. Drives me crazy when I see a tweet that #Hashtags #Every #Single #Word. On Instagram, 10-15 is good, on Twitter, 1-3 should do the trick. I don’t really use them on Facebook at all, they don’t have the same application there. Also, don’t “trick” people by using irrelevant hashtags. Using #Belieber might get you Beiber fans, but they’ll be pissed if they find out your post has nothing to do with the Beebs.
6. Don’t Bleed the Feed. Space your posts out over time. Use scheduling tools; Facebook has one built in, for Twitter I use Hootsuite. It makes sure my content is spread out over the course of the day.
7. Spelling & Grammatical Errors. I get it, in this new world we don’t always use actual words. But if you’re a business, you still should write out “you” as opposed to “u.” Spelling and grammatical errors make you look unprofessional.
8. H2H. Don’t forget the “social” part of social media. Interact with your followers, have a personality. We long for the H2H (human to human) contact, even with a business.

And now, here’s today’s infographic on Social Media Marketing Sins:

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