Social networks are the ideal channel for brands and companies to carry out much more direct communication and fast with your consumers, whether to solve their problems, interact with them or simply advertise your products. However, it is also the way by which organizations can suffer a credibility crisis with their clients thanks to its wide scope and dissemination.
A very drastic example of this was given by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, when he asked on his personal Twitter if he should sell 10% of the shares of the firm. Two days later, the tycoon lost up to 50 billion after his company’s stock plunged. Another quite remarkable case gave it Post in May of this year, when his stamp campaign against racism caused a stir on social media.
It’s easier than it seems to mess up your network management, and a small mistake or lack of thought can cause a veritable barrage of negative comments about the company. For this reason, Nuvix Consulting has compiled the 13 most common and serious errors in social networks that can affect the image of a brand:
- Not having a well-defined strategy. It is the main mistake that beginner brands make in the world of social networks: venturing to publish without knowing very well how to do it, when to do it and who to turn to. Before it is essential to create a strategy in RRSS that is aimed at meeting the business objectives of the brand. And a good part of this falls on studying the hours and days in which the publications will work best, as well as developing a content plan that is related to the audience.
- Be on all social networks, even if it is not necessary. A direct consequence of publishing on networks without a prior strategy is to do so on all social networks without having investigated whether the brand’s target audience is found in those channels, something that can lead to waste of resources and abandoned accounts. For example, communicating on younger networks such as Instagram or TikTok may not be the best fit for a law firm.
- Not completing 100% of the brand’s profiles. Another very frequent mistake when creating a profile in RRSS is leaving some of the data of interest incomplete. Do not forget that social networks are also an information channel for potential customers, so before capturing followers you have to give all the possible details of the brand so that potential followers are informed.
- Buy fake followers and bet on quantity rather than quality. It is a bad practice that many brands still carry out and that not only does not contribute anything, but it can be harmful. And it is that fake accounts will never buy or interact with the company, but they generate a bad impression and distrust with potential real followers. This is a direct consequence of the thinking of many brands that when they start they should get as many followers as possible on their networks, despite the fact that it is much more effective to attract those who will be most interested in the message. In short, it is better to bet on quality followers who are going to interact than on a large number of followers who are not interested in the brand.
- Not taking into account the algorithm to publish. Not everything that a company will publish on its networks will appear on the timeline of its followers. And is that each social network has an algorithm that modifies the contents of the timelines of each user taking into account their interests, so there are not two unique ones. Therefore, to bypass the algorithm, you have to interact with users. And it is that sometimes brands forget that social networks are indeed that, a means to socialize. This means that you have to try to connect directly with the followers by responding to their comments, solving their doubts and thanking them for their good comments.
- Using too many #hashtags. A very common mistake is to write the tweet or message with a large number of hashtags that do not provide visibility and dirty the text. It does not make much sense to publish “#errors on #social networks that can #eeriously affect #brands”, since words of no interest to Internet users and on which no one will click are being tagged.
- Being too formal in language. Corporate RRSS are different information channels from the traditional ones and, therefore, you can play a little more with the message to get the audience’s attention. Therefore, it will always be much more striking to bet on short texts, talking about you instead of you and supporting communication with resources such as emojis. Of course, the fact that the communication is informal does not mean that it should be unprofessional, since a poorly written or misspelled message will be rejected by the public.
- Not giving added value to the customer. Social media is a great channel for brands to position themselves as opinion leaders in their respective industries. But for this, an excessively corporate or advertising communication in which only the brand is talked about should be avoided and bet on useful messages and interesting information for followers.
- Publish too much content in a short time. Constantly occupying the timeline of users with messages or tweets of the brand can be equal or more damaging than having the profile of the social network abandoned, since in the eyes of the client it can be considered as spam. In this sense, you have to know how to respect the formats of each network and adapt to the rhythm of your followers (for example, on Twitter you can make several daily posts, while on Instagram it is preferable to reduce them to 5 a week.
- Ignore or eliminate criticism. On the other hand, there are brands that not only do not interact with their followers, but also ignore their criticisms or directly eliminate them. Of course, this does not hide the problem, but it aggravates it, since the networks are as valid a customer service channel as the telephone can be, and consumers know it.
- Feed the Troll. It is not uncommon to find users who do not stop making negative reviews and even toxic comments in any publication that uploads a brand to social networks. For this type of case there is a saying in English that says “Don’t feed the troll”, that is, do not give the toxic user a loudspeaker so that he can discredit the company in front of the rest of the audience. The ideal in this sense is to take it to direct messages.
- Spread the same content on different networks. Reusing the same copy and images on different social networks never works well. This generates a monotonous image of the brand before the follower, who will see the same thing several times in different places and will end up getting bored.
- Imitate the competition. Faced with a brand that is achieving great repercussions on its networks, it may happen that your competition decides to study and apply the same tactics. But this is difficult to succeed, since each brand is different even within the same sector, so your needs in RRSS will also be different. But you can always use the benchmarketing technique, which consists of learning from the competitor’s movements and adapting them to your business objectives.
