Social Mistakes Make You Look Bad

Social Mistakes can ruin your day. Or your life. Or your business. You can make a total fool of yourself in a one second post that will haunt you forever. You can also sit in your cozy little basement room at Grandma’s ignorant of the tittering laughter that accompanies your every post or comment.

Classic Social Mistakes that you’ve probably heard of include using trending tweet tags to slip your advertising message into the million or so baby or death announcements associated with it. Scheduling automatic tweets that reference outside people places or events you have no control over. Pinning your entire product catalog in Pinterest, and a slew of others I’m sure you’ve probably already read about and heeded well.

Be very cautious when you’re obviously promoting a product

I’d like to point out a few of the really subtle dumbnesses, er, social mistakes I see all the time on Facebook.

Top Social Mistakes on Facebook:

Me-Me-Me: all your posts, all day, every day, are about you. Yeah, you’re cool enough to have figured out how to make a Facebook page. We got it, and were you aware how easy it is to unsubscribe?

You need to engage your audience. Make them think you know something about something besides your own glorious visage in the mirror. You need to post stuff that might be remotely affiliated with you, but doesn’t directly involve you. Guide services can post photos of other climbers climbing, weather reports, pretty cloud pictures, news stories from other countries – just interesting stuff for your fans to kill time and figure you have a broad perspective on things.

Just uncheck the boxes to see nothing at all in your timeline – they’ll never know

Sniper: every time someone posts anything about anything, comment as though you own them. This is like the Chinese Fortune Cookie ” .. in bed” gag. I should also call this the “that’s not what she said” social mistake.

This is a great away to annoy a lot of people in a hurry. In case you don’t understand, here’s a purely hypothetical example of one of these social mistakes and the type of doo it can result in.

Bob: I just got my first hole in one today!
BadCompany: That’s probably because you were wearing your BadCompany Velcro Metatarsal Sling.
Bob: Um, no, I practiced a lot.
BadCompany: There’s nothing like a BadCompany Velcro Metatarsal Sling on the green.
Bob: I don’t even have that POS sling, I only followed you to win a freaking t-shirt
BadCompany: if you wear the BadCompany Velcro Metatarsal Sling, you’ll stop being so cranky

Oblivious. Yeah. Please, let people just have fun and don’t troll their posts. Like stuff, compliment people, grieve when they do, celebrate when they do, and don’t try to manipulate it into a shining marketing moment. It’s their moment, let them have it.

Don’t set anything on autopilot – makes you look not only dumb, but lazy

Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell: yeah, you’re a big important company, or rock star celebrity. You can ignore all your messages, emails, comments, and other attempts at close and personal contact. You earned your right to be above the riff-raff, right?

Sadly, ignoring everyone while posting links to your stuff to buy, and pics of your stuff or your entourage, is not engagement. Really, look it up – engagement is not one-way. This is one of the social mistakes that can actually be most costly in the long run. You can’t check your messages once a year. You can’t ignore people who may be trying to give you money. It’s not profitable. You don’t have to agree with everyone, and even a simple “Thank you for your comments and support” will do wonders for your image.

If you can’t deal with these simple little suggestions, consider outsourcing your social marketing. Hiring a community manager is a viable option, allowing you to focus on what you do best to make
money and doing the best you can to support your fan base. If you’d like to learn more about social etiquette – one of the best books I can recommend to avoid social mistakes would be “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” a total classic in the art of engagement, though it’s Twitter specific. Another recommended book, though only available for pre-order is Gary Vaynerchuck’s “The Thank You Economy” which has been the topic of talks at several high-visibility social media conferences.

Fun with the Sochi Mascots at SVO in Moscow

Do yourself, your company, and your social network a huge favor, and learn how to be responsible in your communities. I’ve written a very simple guide to Pinterest: Do-it-yourself Social Marketing: Pinterest with a simple plan to promote your business subtly without triggering anyone’s anti-marketing filters.

Drop me a line or comment if you have any thoughts you’d like to share. Thanks 

Steal an iPad tagged image on Facebook

See the photo on Facebook about how to steal an iPad? I mean get a free iPad because of a broken shopping cart? The pic is usually tagged with a few hundred “friends” so it will show up in a lot of feeds. It explains that the online store has a broken shopping cart and forgets to ask for money. The door to the store is wide open.

Steal an iPad and get ripped off

This is a lot like your neighbor going out for errands and forgetting to lock their door. Well, the door is open, so it’s okay to steal an iPad from your neighbors. Right? This is social engineering for scamming. People who want to steal are easy to steal from. It’s easy to con a con man, as the saying goes. I won’t be testing it out, but it’s likely that the site runs you through a bunch of rounds of 20 questions, and sure enough, doesn’t ask for money. They have installed spyware, keylogging software, or have enough of your info to sell your identity. Of course your iPad will never show up. They just wanted to know if you would like to steal an iPad.

Hannum brought a lawsuit against Barnum for calling his giant a fake. When it came to trial, Hull stepped forward and confessed that the Cardiff Giant was a hoax and the entire story. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling Hannum’s giant a fake since it was a fake after all. Thereafter, Hannum’s name was lost to history while Barnum was left with the misplaced stigma of being the one to say “There’s a sucker born every minute.” History Buff

How to not steal an iPad

Untag yourself from these images, and unfriend or block the person who tagged you. Don’t believe nonsense like this. If you were to purposefully go to a broken shopping cart, knowing it was broken, and “purchase” anything, you could be prosecuted for your attempt to steal an iPad.

Never get so busy

Making a living, you forget to make a life

Klout for Social Media Metrics

Klout is one of my favorite measurement tools to gauge the effectiveness of my own social media marketing efforts. I also use Klout to plan my engagement strategy on Twitter. I'll show you more about that in an upcoming video, but here is a brief introduction to Klout, how to use it for the first-timer.

Klout Introduction Video

Klout Social Media Metrics
How to uses Klout to measure and increase your social media metrics for performance social marketing. Let me know if you need more of this training.
Posted by Your Community Managers on Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Screenshot from the video:

Pinterest Pinning for Fast Twitter Engagement

Here's how I got some extremely fast Twitter engagement by using Pinterest. In this example I pinned several pins, pretty quickly. The difference between now and last time though was that I did it during a proven fast response time from my demographic. Just a minute laterI have 20+ follows, retweets, favorites, and list adds on Twitter. I can train you to get the same results. 

Register HERE and I'll send you more info on upcoming training sessions. Many of them are also free. Get the most bang for the buck and let's get started ASAP.

Pinterest Pinning for Twitter Engagement

Here's a perfect example of how to get more engagement on Twitter using Pinterest. In this example I do a search for the keyword "LinkedIn" and pin a quick handful of pins, then a few minutes later check and I have about a dozen retweets, favorites, and list adds on Twitter. I didn't even do this during a prime timeslot for my demographic. It works people, and I can show you how you can get the same results. Register HERE and I'll send you more info on upcoming training sessions. Many of them are also free.

Pinterest Engagement Training - 15 targeted Pins in 3 minutes.

You don't need hours a day to manage your own small or home business on social media. Here's a quick demonstration of the power of Pinterest to encourage your followers, taken from my Social Media 300 Training Program. If you want more, be sure to subscribe to the website

"YourCommunityManagers.com" HERE 

I'll let you know when the next sessions start or hook you up with a personalized private consultation.