Times change. What was once considered sage advice can now do more harm than good – especially when it comes to your social media presence. Not only are we at peak algorithm, but your social audience is now sophisticated and experienced. If you want to see social media success, you’ll need to evolve your social media plan and move away from toxic social media strategies.

Are you ready to implement new strategies that are friendly to today’s social media world?

We wrote the below in early 2020, and we’re back with an updated version to help you successfully plan your 2023 social media strategy!

6 Social Media Strategies To Avoid

1) Automating Your Social Media if You’re Too Busy

A little automation can be a massive boon to managing your social media content. Using a third-party tool to schedule and post content (as an example) can help you batch your post creation and keep you on schedule.

But too much automation and your social media feed can come off as a bullhorn – a surefire way to turn off your audience.

Need an example? How many times have you seen a brand post an Instagram post automatically to their Twitter profile. The result? The tweet consists of a link back to Instagram. Not the actual image. 

Or, how about the brand whose Facebook feed is nothing but auto-posted blog updates. No other content. No other conversations.

Always remember, social media is all about engaging with your audience. The brands that succeed on social media are the ones that are having conversations with their audience and creating meaningful experiences for them. 

Do This Instead

Conduct an audit of what you’re automating on social media. Pay attention to how your automated posts appear to your audience. Then decide which automations are worth keeping and which need to be cast aside in 2020.

2) Being Too Professional With Your Post Copy and Images

Yes, there is such a thing as being “too professional” on social media.

While brands in professional sectors like insurance, finance, and healthcare may need to maintain a certain level of professionalism in their copy, most brands would be better off bringing a sense of levity and authenticity to their social media accounts.

Why?

Your audience has been trained to recognize corporate talk and hollow ad speak when they see it. This type of language is an instant turn off and is the quickest way to make your audience disengage with your brand.

In the same vein as being too professional with your copy, having “too perfect” imagery or videos can also turn off your social audience and come across as disingenuous. We’re not saying to never publish a polished piece of content (video, stock image, whatever), but that this type of content should be mixed in with other, more candid, pieces of content.

Do This Instead 

Post, create, write for your audience. Pretend your brand is a person having a conversation with your target audience. Use this opportunity to embrace your brand’s personality, personify it, and use that personification to have meaningful social engagements with your audience.

3) Publishing Non-Stop Poor Quality Content

Back before FB’s algorithmic changes, it was a standard best practice to post multiple times a day. The reason being, that the Facebook newsfeed at that time showed content chronologically by when it was posted.  The more often you posted, the more likely your posts would appear at the top of your audience’s newsfeed.

If this is your current social media publishing strategy, it’s time to change. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and more all use an algorithm that focuses more on quality content and engagement than when a piece of content is published or the number of posts.

Constantly posting content won’t necessarily increase the number of posts seen by your audience; instead, what ends up happening, is the social network will pick which posts to show on your audience’s newsfeed. If you have a slew of posts for Facebook to choose from, they may end up picking a weaker-performing post instead of a post you would prefer.

Do This Instead

Instead of focusing on post volume, focus on post content. Take the same investment that you’re putting into posting, say, ten posts in a week, and instead invest those same resources into three or four quality posts that resonate with your audience.

The more your content resonates with your audience, the more likely they are to engage with your content. Which, in turn, makes that content more likely to be shown in your audience’s newsfeed, which drives more opportunity for engagement.

4) Not Amplifying Your Content

It’s no secret that most social media platforms have poor organic reach. The vast majority of your audience won’t see your posts, which is frustrating to every brand on social media. After all, you invest your resources into creating great content, only to have that content disappear into the ether.

Not a recipe for high-level ROI.

Do This Instead

No social media strategy is complete without an amplification plan. Your brand needs to have a strategy in place to ensure that your content gets the visibility it needs to drive success. Most often, these amplification strategies consist of two tactics: 

Paid Promotion: Paid promotion is the direct boosting of a social media post as an advertisement from within the social channel. Almost every social media platform has a mechanic for amplifying the reach of your content through paid promotion, with a variety of potential outcomes (engagements, profile likes, clicks, conversions, etc.).

Fan Advocacy: In addition to a paid promotion strategy, many brands also incorporate a fan advocacy program as part of their amplification efforts. With fan advocacy, your brand’s biggest fans are empowered to share your latest content directly to their personal newsfeed. Organic shares of your content beat the dreaded algorithms, helping to increase your content’s visibility, while also building brand awareness with your advocate’s friends and family. 

5) Not Knowing Your Active Social Media Audiences

Do you know who your social media audience really is? Hint, it’s not the persona that you’ve laid out in your strategy. It’s also not who your CXO “thinks” it should be. If you’re creating content in a vacuum based on a faulty understanding of your social audiences, you’re going to find yourself investing time and energy in creating high-quality content that no one asked for, leading to low engagement and an even lower ROI on your efforts.

Do This Instead

Understanding your active social media audience is essential for any business that wants to be successful on social media.

Why?

Because while you can try to attract your ideal audience, you need to capitalize on our actual audiences.

Look at your audience insight data. Most social media platforms have these tools available on their native platform (or you can use specialty social listening tools). Take stock of not only their demographics but also their interest and behaviors:

• What other brands do they follow?
• What content is already resonating with them?
• What are their hobbies/interests?

Once you have a solid understanding of who your audience really is and what they’re interested in, you can start to confidentially create the informative and engaging content that will resonate with them. If you can do this, you’ll be well on your way to success with social media marketing!

6) Sticking to Only One Type of Media

When it comes to social media content, variety is critical to ROI. If you only post single image updates, your followers will get bored quickly – and a bored audience is a lost audience.

Do This Instead

There are many different types of media that you can use in your social media content, including photos, videos, infographics, and more. The important thing is to use a variety of these types to keep your followers interested.

Here are some tips for mixing up your social media content:

• Use a mix of photos, videos, and text in your posts.
• Create thoughtful infographics that are shareable.
• Use different media types to tell a story.
• Share user-generated content to mix things up.
• Go live on social media to add a new dimension to your content.

By following these tips, you can ensure that your social media content is varied and interesting.

Dump Your Toxic Social Media Practices

If you’ve been nodding your head to these standard “worst practices,” it’s time to make a change. If you want to see a stronger return on your social media investment, start by dumping these toxic social media practices.

Ready to take your social media amplification to the next level? SocialToaster makes it easy for your brand’s biggest fans to become your loudest voice on social media. Schedule a free demo with a fan advocacy expert and learn how your brand can begin leveraging the sharing power of SocialToaster today.