Source: Unsplash | Marten Bjork
Every day, businesses put their reputations on the line. Indeed, each in-person customer interaction, email correspondence, and social media message has the potential to either enhance or damage a business’s brand. While some mistakes are obviously bigger than others, few are quite so detrimental as those made on social media. After all, errors on social media are visible to a potentially massive audience. With that in mind, today we’re going to highlight five common social media blunders businesses often make and explain what your company can do to avoid committing them:
Tone-Deaf Posts
In an ideal world, businesses should understand the needs and preferences of their customers intimately. However, that’s not always the case. The bad news is that there’s not much worse than posting tone-deaf content that in some way devalues customer attitudes or preferences. Taking the temperature of your audience is a must before you start posting regularly.
Not Following Up
Some businesses may assume that creating one post per blog or special offer is sufficient. However, that’s not always the case. For whatever reason, a large number of consumers may have missed out on an important message you posted on social media. Given that fact, it makes sense to create multiple posts about the same topic in order to keep your followers up to date. There’s nothing wrong with creating a couple “in-case-you-missed-it” posts.
Bland Content
No modern business can afford to be boring. Whether your company manufactures paper plates or develops software, your content must be engaging and relevant. Consider reaching out to a professional video production team if your posts have been lacking a sophisticated look-and-feel.
Inconsistent Messaging
Companies with multiple branches often have specific social-media accounts for those branches. This, in the main, is a good idea. Yet, when these branch pages contain conflicting information, customers can become confused. To avoid this issue, large corporations should implement a strong social media governance plan that spells out company policy and social media best practices.
Silence
True, each social media post a business creates comes with a degree of risk. But worse than saying something boring or controversial is saying nothing at all. Businesses rely on their social media pages to connect with their customer base. Without an active and vibrant social media presence, a business loses both its ability to gather information from their customer base, as well as their capacity to promote itself effectively. Dormant or abandoned accounts are poison to a company’s brand. So if you decide to create a new social media account, ensure all of your old ones are deactivated as well.
