Avoiding Common Social Media Mistakes

Social media can be a great adjunct to your article marketing campaign, but like anything else, it has its potential for faux pas.

Don’t kid yourself – it’s not just rookies who make social media mistakes! Many very experienced social networking gurus have made them too. Paying more attention to how you are perceived online will only help you build your network and grow your business.

(5) Common Social Media Mistakes to Avoid:

  1. Resist the temptation to respond to every negative comment made about you or your article or post. – don’t defend yourself. Let your faithful readers do that for you. Don’t engage in a war of words, you’ll just look defensive. Take the higher ground.

  2. Avoid Tweeting or Facebooking only links to your blog, your latest accomplishments or those of your company. It makes you look like a braggart! No one wants to hear about how great you are all of the time. Make sure your postings are adding value to the conversation. Take time to provide an insightful tidbit of information or praise the accomplishments of others. If you were conversing with someone face to face you wouldn’t constantly talk about yourself, would you? Treat places like Twitter and Facebook as you would a table full of your friends. Listen – and contribute when you really have something to say!

  3. Don’t follow 8,000 people that have no connection in anyway. Quality is way better than quantity. This is true on two fronts. You don’t need to have 35,000 followers to be heard. It’s the quality of your followers that counts. Follow good people and good people will follow. Engage with those people and you will be heard. Quality is also more important in your posts. It’s much better to post one or two quality items per day than 15 really boring ones!

  4. Stop constantly asking people to retweet or “favorite” things. No one likes to be told what to do! If someone likes your post, they’ll tell other people. But if you keep bugging them to do it – no one will.

  5. You don’t need to sign up for every social media networking tool available. If you do this, you’re almost guaranteeing that you’ll never really connect with anyone. Pick one or two and really work them. Concentrate on building your network in one or two places, rather than dipping your toe in the water of many.

With all of the new technology and various Internet tools constantly coming our way, it’s impossible to avoid all of the potential pitfalls! But if you use common courtesy, and consider what you would like to read before you post something, you’ll find yourself making connections that mean something to you and your business.

If you’d like to discover some great ways to effectively integrate EzineArticles with social media, check out these past blog posts and videos:

Now, if you don’t mind, we’re going to post this on Facebook and Twitter – would you please favorite it and retweet it? Just kidding! Instead, tell us about some of the social media faux pas you may have committed.

Posted by Marc, Product Marketing Manager on August 26, 2009 at 12:51 pm | 7,391 views

16 Comments »


1
Alex Yeo writes:

A lot of people just follow the latest craze… especially newbie marketers. They think by doing all these “tactics”, they will get get tons of traffic, tons of buyers, tons of followers etc.

Take twitter for example, some people might have 10+ followers… but are they heard? It may look cool on the surface and make you feel you are important. Don’t kid yourself. You aren’t getting more traffic… becos’ you are just “invisibly followed”

Comment provided August 26, 2009 at 1:25 PM

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2
Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Oh man! Do I need this! “Thank you”

Comment provided August 26, 2009 at 1:31 PM

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3
Chinmay Chakravarty writes:

O’ all twitter haters and twitter lovers! Leave your earlier love-hate confrontation and join this forum! Focus on quality where no argument can ever exist.

Comment provided August 26, 2009 at 2:05 PM

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4
Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ohh boy! So NOW what!? LOL

Comment provided August 26, 2009 at 2:09 PM

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5
Gail Manishor writes:

Thank you very much for the info. I am a total newbee to everything including Facebook, and Twitter. I don’t even know how to use them properly, but am learning.
I may have made a blunder on Facebook by putting in my link of my articles on EzineArticles.com. Somehow the banner got put in too, which was not my plan Is that really bad?

Comment provided August 26, 2009 at 2:16 PM

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6
Gail writes:

And how about Twitterers who follow you and then drop you when you don’t follow them back – again and again and again. I see the same names popping up. All they want to do is rack up the numbers. I stick with Tweets that are relevant to my interests.

Comment provided August 26, 2009 at 3:29 PM

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Lance Winslow writes:

Great advice, and some other great advice would be to show your IQ level by avoiding all of it to begin with. In otherwords, disconnect from the chaos and controversy, the sound and fury of all this nonsense now. Besides you’ll probably save yourself from a computer virus too. It seems all the social networks are getting hit these days.

Further, did you know that a survey was done of all the faculty and professors of all the colleges and universities and more than half, said they did not participate at all on social networks.

So, here is a question for everyone. If all the folks you believe to be the smartest of our society, the same ones who taught you all you know, and whom you trust for information refuse to use social networks, then shouldn’t that be telling you something? I mean the latest SAT Scores are at an all time low, while the social network use is at an all time high, thus, this would lead an observer to note that social networks are very bad for your IQ, yes, even your social IQ, as they are re-arranging your nature and social interaction in the real world.

I was at starbucks yesterday and a mom, text her teen outside the store, to ask what type of frappachino he wanted? Come on people, what about the real world, are we to just ditch all that in favor of this nonsense.

Whereas, this is good advice in this blog post to prevent being verbally abused online, it is also modifying your “real behavior” and your real needs as a person. If you deny yourself what you “need” as a human, for the accompany of the mass mob then in essence you are giving up self, for a sense of belonging; but belonging to what I ask?

A groups of childish commoting humans, ranting and raving about nothing? Grow up people, if your life is so dismal in the real world you have to seek approval online, and give up your individuality in the process you have dumped self, for what? Nothing? Great choice, dah.

Most of these folks are addicted and they go crazy if they are out of touch for more than a few waking hours, seriously, look at yourselves, get a life.

Comment provided August 26, 2009 at 5:15 PM

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8
Christopher M. Knight writes:

Marc said, “It’s the quality of your followers that counts.”

Of course I agree with him and this argument is a lot like our article debate about which is better: Quality or Quantity?

The answer being = BOTH are important.

One without the other yields very little in terms of IMPACT.

Comment provided August 27, 2009 at 10:49 AM

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9
Lance Winslow writes:

Too often I see “Big Name Celebrities” and Self Help Gurus with 50,000 plus followers. But they have been doing real world personal branding and marketing for 10-years or more, giving speeches, doing movies etc.

Then some average guy say; “I want to be famous like them!”

And of course, he sees what they are doing and is lured into the trap of building their list of followers, and they do anything to get anyone to join that list. But in reality their links, followers, and subscribers are not really that into them.

In reality they are taking a short cut without ever performing, or putting in the hard work. If there is one thing I’ve learned in like. There are no worthwhile short cuts.

If you want strong followers – write great stuff; intellectually stimulating, genius level creative, informationally valid, or humorously relevant.

See that point?

Comment provided August 27, 2009 at 7:30 PM

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10
Christopher M. Knight writes:

Lance,

Great point.

Clicking the “FOLLOW” button 70,000 times so that 50,000 people follow you back as ‘friends’ doesn’t make one a genius…

Thing is… most non-twitter peeps don’t know it’s that easy and they falsely think people with high follower counts must be geniuses.

Comment provided August 28, 2009 at 10:04 AM

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11
Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Ton’s of followers can be darn boring too I would think.

btw… and this is kinda funny, yesterday a very classy hair salon followed me that is just 1/2 hour away. My husband has been looking for a place just like that to cut his mid back length hair. We are going there today. Ahh Lance see? The many attributes of Twitter power! LOL

Comment provided August 28, 2009 at 10:24 AM

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12
Jose Bulao writes:

Thank you for these tips on the social media networking. I have not tried social media yet. I do not really know its advantages for my business.

Comment provided August 29, 2009 at 1:29 AM

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13
Anthony Mora writes:

You’re a mind reader. A colleague and I were just talking about that. People are being made to feel if they’re not on every social network and spending time on each one they’re falling behind, where the reverse is usually the case because they’re spending time on social networking sites instead of on their business. Not that I don’t feel social networking is important, but as with anything else, in moderation and if only if you have some sense of the process. Maybe one or two sites work for you. If so, focus there. An entire industry has sprung up overnight that teaches people how to utilize social media. Some of these consultants are quite good, but a number of them simply try to land clients by making them feel that they’re falling behind. I’m with you, don’t think that simply by being on a site you’re accomplishing much of anything. Find what works for you, keep your focus and ignore the rest of the noise and clutter.

Comment provided September 1, 2009 at 8:02 PM

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14
zuri writes:

Nice…It’s common because I’ve made the same mistakes in the past, now I learned my lessons. Hope it will help more people to avoid the same mistakes again.

Comment provided November 12, 2009 at 9:18 PM

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15
izmir araç kiralama writes:

I have not written my first article and I guess it is fear. Your article had some really good information that I hope will get me on the track of where to begin. I know I can do it but I needed some guidance and you gave me that. Now I need to try it. Thanks for taking out some of the fear factor.

Comment provided February 21, 2011 at 11:02 AM

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16
Jose Bulao writes:

Hi Ismir!

To encourage you, let me tell you that I had thought that my first article would not be accepted. But it was accepted. Now I have many articles.

Comment provided February 22, 2011 at 6:01 AM

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