March 3, 2020
Dec 13, 2022
/ by
Andrew Kunesh
We’ve all seen (and cringed at) it: bad social media marketing.
But whether it’s auto-replies gone bad or a criminal overuse of emojis, there are definitely some no no’s in the social media marketing space that are guaranteed to annoy your audience.
Not only do these make you look out of touch, but they can also hurt your reputation and hugely damage your company in the process.
So to save you the heartbreak (and cringe factor), in this article, we’ll run through six things your brand should never ever do on social media.
Keep these in mind when writing content and developing a social media strategy. Trust us, you’ll thank us later.
Ready? Let’s dive in!
Corporate non-apologies are one of social media’s biggest pet peeves, and your audience will no-doubt call you out on them.
So next time your brand needs to apologize for something, make sure that you do it right.
Send a real apology from the heart. Acknowledge your audience’s feelings, promise to do better, and don’t make excuses. Doing this will send a real message from the heart—not just another blame dodge.
Here’s an embarrassing one: auto-replies gone wrong.
We’ve all seen these in the wild. Think airline Twitter accounts sending generic “thank you” replies to canceled flights, or banks offering tech support to protestors.
So to avoid the embarrassment, handle all @replies manually. This lets you personalize your responses and give helpful answers that your audience will actually appreciate.
Emojis are an awesome way to make more engaging posts. They make your brand look more “real”, and create a friendly vibe around your brand. But please: use them in moderation.
In fact, using too many emojis makes your posts look spammy and kills your brand’s professionalism.
So as a general rule, only use 1-2 emojis per social media post. This gives you the chance to sound friendly and in-touch while maintaining your professionalism—see the example above.
Engagement bait is one of the biggest no-nos of social media marketing.
Unfortunately, we’ve all seen these posts before. They ask users to tag friends, react to posts, to vote or receive some kind of award. See the examples above for more info.
This content is being actively demoted by Facebook but is still surprisingly prevalent on brand pages… but let’s be real: no one actually wants to see it.
Why? Simple: it provides no real value for its viewers, and its sole purpose is to breed fake engagements. This will annoy your audience, give your brand a bad face on social media, and can seriously hurt your professional reputation.
So please, never ever use engagement bait.
Chances are your audience members follow you on multiple social networks. For example, a big fan might Like your Facebook page, follow you on Twitter, and check your Instagram account.
With that in mind, make sure you’re not automatically cross-posting every social media post to all of your social media accounts at once. This will annoy your super-fans that like you across social networks and makes you look a just a bit unoriginal.
We recommend creating different social content for different networks and posting identical content at different times on different social networks.
One of the easiest ways to do this is using Traject Social’s Posting Schedule and Content Group features. Use these features to automate posting at different times, so you can truly put your social posting on high-quality autopilot.
Wit, humor, and sounding “hip” are great, and you should totally use them when you have the chance. But please, whatever you do, don’t force it: this will only make your brand look the opposite of cool.
Some of the worst offenders of this are brands that try too hard to sound “millennial.” Using phrases like YASSS, #bae, and slay may sound good in your head, but can make you sound out-of-touch when used at horribly incorrect times.
So instead of forcing your cool, follow our guide to marketing to millennials. It’s chock-full of tips that will make your content more appealing to the younger crowd—you can’t afford to miss it!
Make sure to keep the above annoyances in mind when building your social media plan. Using them on your social accounts can hurt your engagement, destroy your reputation, and make your brand less professional in the eyes of your audience.
But now we want to hear from you. What are your biggest social media annoyances? Let us know in the comments box below—we’re excited to hear from you.
