26 May 3 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid

A good social media campaign is essential to a business’ success. However, marketers often get stuck in some common writing pitfalls on social media.

Follow these tips to make sure your social media presence is successful, clean and intentional:

Ditch Promotional Posts on Facebook

In late 2014, Facebook cracked down on promotional posts. This simply means that organic posts that sound too much like ads (or worse, outright SPAM) will be demoted in the newsfeed.

If your posts sound too much like a paid advertisement or a sponsored post, it will quickly be lost in the newsfeed of your “friends”.

Here’s an example of a promotional post from Facebook:

Although this example isn’t a paid advertisement, it feels like an ad. This is not the type of content that catches people’s attention.

This post directly pushes users toward a link to buy a product. Try to avoid this in your posts in order to keep your content from being another sell-out ad!

Here’s another example:

This example is similar; it’s pushing users to download an app. Even as an advertisement, there’s nothing interesting or engaging about it.

Don’t Cross-Post

Under some circumstances, you might be able to reuse post copy from one network on another. In general though, we’d advise against this. That’s because best practices and audience expectations differ on each network. Your short and punchy Facebook post might not do as well on LinkedIn for example. And your hashtag-loaded tweet certainly won’t play well on Facebook.

Make Sure Your Copy Aligns With Your Images

Fluidity in your business’ copy and visual content is important. When done well, the orchestration of copy and visual elements can take your social media content from good to great.

Tip #1: Placement Matters

According to an eye-tracking study done by Eyetrack III, images located above headlines engage visitors better than images that come after. Also, make sure the image is on top of the page, so they don’t have to scroll to find it.

Tip #2: Put a Caption on it!

The same eye tracking study found that smaller text promotes focus. Visitors will better retain the information located in the caption, instead of skimming through it like they do if the text is bigger.

Tip #3: Direct Your Audience’s Gaze

Not only can you use images to grab attention and keep people engaged, you can direct their gaze to where you want it.

If everyone in an image is looking in one direction, your viewer will too.