5 Social Media Marketing Practices that needs to be stopped
I am going to outline 5 most annoying social media practices.
I talked about some Social Media Marketing trending of 2017.
However, social media marketers need to stop some practices that can annoy people.
In this article, I am going to outline 5 most annoying social media practices.
(1) Auto Direct Messages on Twitter
We know you are very polite and send a direct message to us. However, the chance for people to read the direct message (DM) on Twitter is very small. It is because there are too many auto DMs.
It is true that we can miss some read and genuine messages, but it becomes more difficult. Blame the automated, overly promoted spams and impersonal thank you messages. These messages do not have positive marketing effect for your brand. Instead, people may unfollow, mute, or even block you to contact them.
So what should you the marketers do instead? If you want to contact the person, you can go to their profile and look for their email contact, or send them a tweet.
(2) Adding LinkedIn contacts to your Email List
Seriously, this is annoying. I have received many spam emails about investment, gold mines, and even a sex toy discount offer. These emails are coming from my LinkedIn contacts while they have the opening “Thank you for connecting me on LinkedIn. This is a special offer for you!”
Some people think that using LinkedIn “contact” for email marketing is a way to generate more leads. However, it turns out it is a spamming practice. Adding people to an email list without permission is spamming them.
I live in Canada. The spam legislation is very strict, and I can report someone who spams me on LinkedIn. You will take a risk to get a penalty.
On the other hand, someone can upload their Linkedin contact email lists to Facebook Ads and create a Custom Audience. Facebook does not allow such practice. It is because the person has to give the permission to you for this purpose.
(3) Auto Comments on Instagram
Don’t use third party tools for posting comments on Instagram. You must have seen these comments before: “Love it!” “Cool!” and so on.
In fact, there are some blackhat Instagram apps with auto comments function. These apps are considered as spamming on Instagram, and it is against Instagram’s guidelines.
Even if you do not use any these apps, don’t post a robot-like comment. “ People may consider you as a bot when you only comment “Great pic!” “nice” So if you acting like a bot, please stop. Write something more personal in the comments.
(4) Adding People to Groups on Facebook without permission
This happened to me few times. It is a very bad social media practice. If you want your friend to join your group, please invite them or ask them politely. Adding people to your new group without permission is quite rude.
(5) Tag Tag Tag.. RECKLESSLY
Tagging function on social media platforms are very powerful and useful, but it can be very annoying. I have received people tagging on Instagram for promoting their new projects, new products, or special offers.
Most of the time I ignore these tags and I consider most of them are spams. I unfollowed and blocked some people who consistently tagged me.
If you want to use tagging function for marketing, you have to use it wisely. For example, tag someone in a relevant post and the person would be most likely interested in (do some research). Do not tag someone into political posts. That is a big no-no.
Here is the infographic to summarise my post from Socially Sorted:
So do you have any experience with annoying social media practices?
Originally published at Apartment Number 2 from Tony Yeung, Toronto Social Media Marketing Specialist
