Social Media Worst Practices

You’ve probably gotten tons of fabulous great advice about how to do social media, but what about bad advice? Bad advice is rare right? Just joking! Sometimes bad advice is so bad that it can be good. Or at least, good for a big laugh! Here are some social media worst practices suggested by a few social media manager friends.

“Social media is a waste of time”

Haven’t heard this one since 2009, but there may be some who still believe it. My friend Heather Baker Steele (of Blue Steel Solutions) suggested this one.

“Automate Direct Messages in Twitter”

Send an auto DM to people right after they follow you thanking them–or asking them to “like” you on Facebook. Maybe back in the day people were able to pull this off successfully, but I haven’t seen anyone do a good job with an auto DM recently. This is one that I’ve heard personally.

“Just connect all your networks to Facebook, and schedule, and it will all get cross-posted. #FACEPALM“

A beauty of a piece of bad advice, via Kirti Dwivedi, of Diya Marketing. What some people don’t know is that you can see when you cross-post. On Twitter, those posts show up with a shortened Facebook link. People know you’re not there, so they’re not very likely to follow you.

“Automate posts on Facebook (via 3rd party app) especially if you are strapped for time”

Ruby Rusine of Social Success Marketing sent that one. Did you know that it’s pretty easy to schedule from right within Facebook? No need to use a scheduler!

“Cross-Posting Can Save You a Lot of Time”

Yes, it can. You can save even more time if everyone unfollows you because your cross-posting annoys them! Because then you’ll only have a few followers, and fewer conversations.

Social Media Worst Practices: ROI on Every Tweet

“You Need a ROI on Every Tweet”

This one was submitted by friend Amy Donohue (@TheFabulousOne on Twitter). And yes, social media managers hear this one a lot. Some even try to micromanage Twitter by asking their social media managers to justify each tweet. See my post on how to demotivate employees for more information!

“We don’t need Twitter”

This one is pretty common, although most people then admit that they don’t understand Twitter. Another good one that Amy Donohue heard. And if you think Twitter is a waste of time…did you know that Amy donated her kidney because of a tweet? Take a look at the trailer for her movie, “Social Media Stole My Kidney.”

 “Buy followers to get your clients started.”

Another wonderful and terrible piece of advice heard by Kirti Dwivedi of Diya Marketing. If you want to know about reasons not to do this, see my previous post about buying fake followers and why it’s a bad idea.

Did you get any really good bad advice?

Was there any bad advice that made you laugh out loud? I’d love to hear it!

And thank you to all my social media manager friends for the bad advice!