9 Social Media Fails To Avoid According To Businesses [Infographic]

By Ruby Rusine, Published November 2, 2014

The following social media fails are from businesses who I consider as peers. The avatar/logo you see online are not inanimate objects. They are people.

Here is a list of their pet peeves. Past the infographic are best practices I’d recommend. Feel free to share yours below.

If you’ve followed my blog for some time , you will notice that I do not use the word rules. What rules???! Right. These are best practices and there are so many ways that you can fix these fails. Feel free to share yours.

1. “…Twitter followers who follow you, you engage with them and follow back, they have unfollowed you.” ~ @Arcape International

Social Media Best Practice: If unsure whether to follow (back) someone, put followers in a list (if that feature is available) and see how it goes from there instead of following them right away then unfollow them later. I know a couple of active internet mavens who not only unfollow accounts once they find out that they’ve been unfollowed; they, also, block the offending account/brand.

2. “I would have to say companies that have social media accounts and have not posted in a year or more, or not at all. ~ @solutionsdirect

Social Media Best Practice: If you don’t have staff to manage this, hire a social media consultant. If you don’t want to do that, un-publish the account, or delete it. Don’t leave your social media account orphan for a long time. Your not saying (posting) anything, tells your followers so many things. Besides, your smart competition could leverage your absence online to their favor.

3. “Posting a nondescript picture with no caption. Why am looking at parking lot right now?” ~ @Thomas RPN

Social Media Best Practice: Unless you’re running a “Caption This” contest, describe your image. You know why you posted it; but we, your followers, don’t. We don’t read minds. Image ought to be used to reinforce a content; therefore should be in-context.

4. “Social media is supposed to be social. Stop promoting and start engaging.” ~ @ecowrites

Social Media Best Practice: Yes, you can use social media as a publishing and promotion tool but people are looking for connection. It starts with a conversation. Engage! How? I’ve recently written social media engagement tips to encourage conversation.

5. “Tired of people on twitter following who are just out there pimping their “buy followers”. I don’t want to buy followers so I’m always muting them.” ~ @bxboy52

Social Media Best Practice: Dial down self promotion. Smart users don’t buy followers. It is counterintuitive if building an engaged community is a KPI (Key Performance Index).

6. “Ignoring brand mentions from folks who are promoting your products. Just rude!” ~ @bluesteeletx

Social Media Best Practice: Manners rule online. Remember behind an avatar is a person.

7. “My #1 Pet Peeve is when people Tweet from Facebook. It communicates that they aren’t present. Why should I have to click over to Facebook to see your hamster riding a turtle?” ~ @YouTooCanBeGuru

Social Media Best Practice: Strategy is doing the right thing, in the right place, at the right time and the right way. Twitter audience treats posts differently from Facebook users. The savvy users will just scroll past your post when they figure out you are just automating it, and that you are not “there” in the platform where they are at.

8. “Too many hash tags, hash tags on Facebook, DMs after following someone on Twitter, people not responding to you on SoMe, people that RT Follow Friday lists…I could go on.” ~ @tracycopy

Social Media Best Practice: Use hash tags sparingly. The way hash tag is used, accepted and tolerated on Instagram won’t apply in other platforms; build relationship first before you send DM asking new follower to do another thing when you just have followed each other; dial down the digital #FF noise by just sending the person a “Thank you” tweet directly, if that’s what your RT means. 🙂