Social Media Marketing: How to Avoid Being the Worst

Okay, my title was a little harsh – but I needed to get your attention and it worked because here you are! When I say “avoid being the worst” I mean, avoid being one of those social media types… you know, THOSE social media types. The ones you roll your eyes at. There are plenty of Social Media Marketing articles out there that are aimed at assisting you with your social media efforts – but they’re SO outdated.

Are they really still telling people to retweet compliments and mentions? Well, I’m going to give you a little lesson on what drives people crazy in regards to social media marketing accounts, specifically Twitter.

Retweet or not to Retweet

Well, at this point I should probably let you know that RT stands for Retweet…
A retweet can be a number of things:

• An interesting article or statistic relative to your business
• A mention about your company from an individual or company
• A funny photo of a cat with the caption “Case of the Mondays” – so true

So, how do you decide what to RT? Let me make an easy decision for you right off the bat: if you had a friend who was constantly bragging, would you find that annoying? So many individuals and companies will RT every. single. compliment they receive and it drives the average person nuts! No need to brag to the followers you’ve gained – because they’re already following you for a reason. SOME mentions are good however, but you have to mix it up a bit.
For example: let’s say I were to post this article and we received the following responses – which would be more appropriate to retweet?

@LennyKravitzFan
@Brandxten @juliadavidovich is a talented writer and very very very very cool.

or

@JimmyJohn123
@Brandxten wow lol good article

It’s the first one and not only because @LennyKravitzFan thinks I’m a good writer, this can retweeted because it is not out of context like the second.
So what does that leave? Cat photos with HILARIOUS captions and interesting articles. RT interesting content and not just another “3 Tips for Picking a Twitter Profile Picture” – unless you’re a company that specifically photographs Twitter pics, in which case you may have picked the wrong business to be in.
Kidding.
As far as cat photos go… any FUNNY or INTERESTING picture is good for your timeline. It breaks up your tweets a bit and it reflects your personality – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Tweeting Too Much

We’ve heard “less is more” tossed around before but that’s not the advice I’m going to give you. The advice I’m going to give you is EVERYTHING in moderation.
Don’t tweet once a day and absolutely do not tweet once every ten minutes. Sure, we all get caught up in those never-ending tweet threads from time to time but don’t make it a habit. People definitely notice those who tweet too much – in a bad way. It’s annoying and will get you unfollowed like crazy. You just need to find your balance and under no circumstance tweet a picture of your coffee. Nobody wants to see that.
Realistically, you should be scheduling a good chunk of your tweets on a platform like Hootsuite of curated content – the good stuff though, with clickable titles. You want to make sure that the stuff you’re tweeting is A+, so yes, once in awhile participate in a trending hashtag to reflect your sparkling sense of humor, you’ll strike up loads of conversations along the way but you need to put out the right message.

Begging for Attention

You’ve seen these people asking people to follow or RT them. Get a grip, man! An unanswered @reply is kind of like an unanswered text. There’s not question they saw your message but they’re not replying. You could send another message or a third and fourth message but you really shouldn’t. Now, that’s just an individual, but if a company does it it’s much worse.
By begging for a follow or asking for RTs your company is broadcasting to the world that you are insecure. The proper way to go about it is the old fashioned way, or as international musical artist Drake would say: “I’m doing me“ I’m hip and understand cultural references, yes, but Drake has a message: be independent.
Keep producing your own interesting, sharable content that people will want to read and naturally the word will spread about your brand. Sure, that sounds like a long drawn out process but it’s part of the fun. You’re going to build a huge fan base by just doing you.
Listen to Drake’s sound advice though, he did start from the bottom, after all.
Okay that’s the last of the Drake puns, I’m so sorry.