Whether you are an individual or a brand, the use of social media platforms may be one of the major needs. But sometimes our own mistakes hurt our productivity and even sometimes social media companies penalize us also. In this article, we will light on the 12 most common social media mistakes to avoid.
We do some mistakes knowingly and some unknowingly but ultimately mistakes are mistakes. And the only way is to learn about it and use social media platforms in a way where you don’t do mistakes.
Here is a list of the 12 most common social media mistakes that you need to avoid. Apart from these, there might be many other things also that you also need to know and be optimized.
1- Ignoring Privacy Settings
I will start this list with this most important mistake. Some people create social media accounts and use them also but they never bother to go through their privacy settings and optimize them.
If you don’t consider it on time, it might be a setback. If you will go through, you will have many settings under privacy and you should set them one by one according to your choice.
For example – Your activity status on Instagram: you should know whether it is turned on or turned off.
If you ask about my observation, I would say privacy setting is one of the major requirements but sometimes people ignore it. Ignoring it is one of the major social media mistakes.
How to Turn Off Activity Status on Instagram?
2- Not Optimizing Bio and Profile
When people follow you, they usually would like to see your content. But apart from the content people also consider checking your Bio and profile.
If your Bio and profile are properly optimized, people easily understand you and know what type of content they can expect from you.
This is one of the most common social media mistakes some people usually do when they do not optimize their profile and bio.
3- Having Account on Many Platforms at Once
There are many social media platforms available. But if you are creating your account on all the social media platforms or considering too many platforms from starting, it might be one of the major social media mistakes for you.
Let’s understand why:
Case1: You have an account on 4 major social media platforms
Case2: You have an account on 15 different social media platforms
What do you think is where you can manage your social media presence effectively, efficiently, and within a particular time limit? In which case you can produce better content?
See, creating and managing so many accounts in one shot is not a good idea. Initially, you should have your account on only a few major social media accounts.
4- Lack of Consistency – Social Media Mistakes to Avoid
If observe some social media accounts, you will find there are some people or name who has millions of followers. And even they are not celebrities also.
There are two major factors behind them:
- First, publishing quality content
- Second, consistency in publishing new content.
Some people even publish good quality content but they do one of the biggest social media mistakes. And that is they lack consistency.
If you or your brand want to grow on social media, you have to maintain consistency. Without publishing good content and consistency, the battle of social media is really a tough game.
5- Publishing Too Much Content in One Shot
Normally, I unfollow people who publish more than 4 or 5 content per day. And I guess, many people do it. See, you should not forget that people want to see your content but not only yours.
Let’s give a space to your followers or audience. You should know how much content you should publish on a particular platform.
Publishing too much content in one shot or in one day is not a good idea. Publish good content and limited content for the day.
6- Bulk Follow and Unfollow Activity
In the search for followers, some guys do this activity. And yes they also get some followers also. But do you know it can be risky for your account?
Whatever I know about social media, I would suggest that you should be away from the activity which looks spammy for your account.
I would say believe in your content strategy and focus on:
- Optimize your bio and account
- Publish quality content
- Maintain consistency
- Monitor your results
- Have proper goals and content strategy
- Engage with your Users
- Use right hashtags
- Write good captions
7- Being Rude on Social Media
Being proactive is a major quality of a personality and you can use this personality trait on social media also. Some people do one of the major social media mistakes and that is showing anger to the audience.
If you are on social media, you should be ready so that everything would not be in your favor. Some people may praise and some people may criticize you as well.
And you need to be stable in both conditions. You should never show any kind of anger or frustration on social media. Ultimately they are user audiences who are engaging with you.
I agree, that criticism doesn’t sound good to anybody but you need to look at its positive side. And you should work on it positively.
8- Addiction to Social Media and Procrastination
Addiction to anything is bad. Social media addiction is also very bad for our life. For professional or business propose, there might be some requirement to spend more time on social media.
But if you are an individual and use social media too much, you can be a victim of procrastination. You will try to postpone your important work and will use social media first.
And it is not a good thing for your work productivity.
9- Not Understanding terms and Conditions – Violation of it
Normally we start using social media and don’t care about terms and conditions. But suddenly sometimes we get shocked when we get penalized for it or social media accounts get terminated.
Like YouTube other social media has their terms and conditions. You must understand all of them so that you don’t violate them.
Because if you do violation of terms and conditions of the particular social media platform you are using, your account may get terminated temporarily or permanently.
Here is an example of a community guideline termination of the YouTube channel.
10- Using Wrong Hashtags
Hashtags are very useful to promote your content on social media. But some people do not use hashtags. And there are a set of people who are using hashtags but not using them properly.
However, there are many people who are using hashtags in the right way and getting the benefits of it also.
First and most important, you should use hashtags. You should insert social media hashtags related to your content. For example, if you are posting content related to Yoga then you should use related hashtags like #yoga and other related hashtags.
11- Ignoring Engagement with Users
Posting quality content on social media is important but ignoring engagement with your audience is not a good idea. If you are also one of them who is not concerned with user engagement then you need to think.
If your interactions with your audience, you will have a positive impact on them. And you can have a strong connection with them.
Your engagement ratio is very helpful for lead generation, promotion and conversion as well.
12- Not Working on Criticism and Feedback
Feedback and criticism can be a good opportunity to improve your branding. Some people take negative feedback in the wrong way and show some anger on social media which is not good at all.
However, you should take negative comments or feedback as an opportunity and work on improvement.
You can also ask your audience that:
- What was the problem?
- What kind of content do they like?
- How can you do something better for them?
Conclusion
There is a huge opportunity of using social media. Whether you are using it for your personal purpose or for business purposes, social media platforms are very useful.
You should be aware that you are not doing mistakes and utilizing them in an optimized way. You should be away from spammy activities.
Every social media platform is unique and you should learn about them to get their full utilization benefits of them.
