Do a quick Google search or scour the front pages of your favorite
social media blogs and you’ll find a seemingly endless array of articles
providing you with tips and advice on social media (this blog included). But if
you read enough of them, which I do, eventually you’ll see those tips and bits
of advice contradict each other.
Don’t post on Facebook more than once a day, or your fans will un-Like
you.
Post more than once a day on Facebook to keep your People Talking About This
score high.
Photos are the most shareable content on Facebook.
Videos are the most shareable content on Facebook.
Post on weekends because other brands don’t and you’ll stand out.
Don’t post on weekends, because nobody is listening then.
It can become dizzying. It’s not that your favorite social media pundit
is lying to you or flat-out wrong. Truthfully, not everyone can be
right; but there are certainly areas of gray, and depending on your brand and
audience, advice can differ.
But I have heard a few tips that are just flat-out wrong or at
least shouldn’t be followed as if they were gospel. Here are five social media
tips you may want to ignore, but you didn’t hear that from me.
1. Post content every single day
Or don’t. The validity of this bit of advice is tied to the channel
you’re talking about, your audience and the expectations you’ve set. At
Post-Advertising we post once a week, but we’re active on Twitter every
weekday. We have actually found that one longer, more insightful post a week
was driving more traffic than a shorter post every day. So don’t worry if you
aren’t blogging every day or even posting on your brand’s Facebook page every
day. Simply set a publishing schedule and stick to it.
2. Ignore paid media… It’s dead
Where’d you hear that? Here? It’s not that traditional advertising
is dead; it’s that no amount of money will make your brand relevant to a
consumer if it doesn’t create something of value. Buy the best billboard in
Times Square. Buy a YouTube homepage takeover. None of it will encourage
someone to buy your product. Paid media won’t build a brand; but it can
certainly build awareness of something about a brand, which is
why paid media on Facebook and Twitter can be so successful.
3. Automation is a social media sin
You may have heard the saying “Automating social media is like sending a
robot to a cocktail hour.” I get it, but to ensure quality and a commitment to
an editorial calendar, being able to schedule content is important. This is a
bit of a gray area, though, so watch out. “Worst practices” in social media
automation include sending automatic direct messages (usually when someone
follows you) and automatically tweeting every post on an RSS feed (what if one
of them is something you don’t agree with?). Use the technologies available to
you to maintain an approved publishing schedule so you can spend your time
listening and actively responding to your audience.
4. Always include a call to action
Head over to Facebook, click on your Pages Feed, and tell me what you
see. Most of the posts will ask their audience to Like or Share or read or buy…
You get the point. There’s nothing wrong with this in small doses, but remember
that every other brand is asking for the same thing, and eventually audiences
can become fatigued. Not every bit of content, whether it is a Facebook post, a
tweet, an Instagram photo or a blog article, must ask your audience to take a
specific action. Of course you hope they’ll share it with their audiences or
even head to your online store and buy a product, but you don’t have to order
them to do it.
5. Post at a specific time
This is one of the most mind-boggling aspects of social media. The only
way to know the best time to post for your brand and your audience is to test.
Use all the data available to you to make informed decisions about when
to test, but ultimately every brand and audience is different. We send our Post-Advertising
newsletter early in the morning because after testing, our data showed that
more people opened the email if it was in their in-box when they arrived at
work. If the data showed use that we should send on Saturday nights at 11 pm
because most marketers are reading their email then (what?), then that’s when
we’d send!
So take my advice, or don’t. I like to think that I have my finger on
the pulse of social media trends and best practices, but the best practice is
the one that works best for your brand and, more important, your audience.
Are there any social media best practices you’ve found success by
ignoring? Let us know in the comments. (Hey, look, a call to action!)
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