Social Media 101 – Avoid the most common mistakes made on social media

You’ve finally decided to embrace Social Media; you’ve realised its importance and how it can work for you and your business. You’re starting to get the hang of it. Congratulations!

There’s not much you can do wrong, however, below is a list of the five most common mistakes “Newbies” to social media make.

1. Being self-absorbed: Remember, social media is like a social gathering – no one wants to spend time with the bore who only talks about themselves or things that matter to them. Find ways to help others, answer their questions, comment on or share their posts. Make your page primarily about THEM; not YOU!

2. Talk too much: Again, no one likes a conversation hog. Sharing too much information all at once goes very quickly from interesting to irritating. Be selective. Think about what you would like to see show up in your social feed. Share accordingly.

3. Wildly erratic presence: Not being on your network for days and then bombarding your network with updates is no way to connect with people. Space out your contributions and if you need to look into using tools such as Sendible, Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Buffer that can help with content scheduling. Facebook itself has a basic scheduling tool as well.

4. Not reciprocating: You should always follow back anyone who is relevant to your goals in social media, thank people who share your content and, most importantly, reply to anyone who talks to or mentions you.

5. Being impatient: Don’t get anxious about the size of your network. A quality network takes time to grow and eventually it will grow exponentially. Target who you would like to be part of your network. It’s not about quantity but quality. You don’t want to appear desperate either. Follow and invite like-minded companies or people who share your goals, explaining the benefit of sharing information amongst one another’s networks. The person who is desperate for friends or followers is somewhat unattractive on social media. It has to be a WIN WIN.