6 Social Media Things You Need to STOP Doing, Right Away

I don’t know another marketing area or social environment that causes anxiety more than social media. On a professional and personal level, social media is associated with the compare-and-despair effect, FOMO, fear of failure and more.

Despite these negative feelings, few are stepping away from social media. And as businesses, we simply can’t.

A May 2016 report from Facebook says that people spend on average of 50 min on Facebook platforms (Facebook, messenger, Instagram, What’s App) a day.  That’s up from 40 min in 2014. “It’s more time than people spend reading (19 minutes); participating in sports or exercise (17 minutes); or social events (four minutes). It’s almost as much time as people spend eating and drinking (1.07 hours).”

[bctt tweet=”People spend on avg 50 min on Facebook platforms. Almost as much as eating & drinking (1.07 hours a day).” username=”manamica”]

In that time, we all do too many things that have low value, zero impact, or are counter-productive.

Here are 6 of those social media things, that you need to stop doing right now!

 

Stop treating a Facebook post like it’s a blog post

If you catch yourself spending more than 15 minutes on a Facebook post, you need a sanity check. Unless you’re a celebrity, an insignificant number of people will see it. And even celebrities don’t sweat over the daily posts. Once in a while, if it’s a truly important post and you plan on promoting it, allow yourself to sweat over it.

Realistically, the majority of your content will be test content. Because no matter how hard you try, it will never be perfect. Ever! Your content will be ideally consumed by thousands and let’s hope millions of people. You will never be able to write content that’s perfect for all! Get comfortable with that. Pay attention to data. What content is resonating with a majority of your audience? Use that as a guide.

Stop spending time on platforms you hate

Both Saya Hillman, Owner, Mac & Cheese Productions, and Brad Farris Principal at Anchor Advisors agree. “It’s not worth it to spend time on platforms you hate. It’ll only make you hate them more. Find the ones that work for you and focus there,” recommends Saya.

Brad is also one of the few I know who abandoned Facebook and didn’t go back. He is focusing on Twitter and LinkedIn. “I never had terrific engagement with business leads there [on Facebook] and the personal relationships were taking more energy from me than they were giving. So I quit. That left me with more time to focus on Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ve gotten terrific traffic and business from LinkedIn (the gold is in the groups). Twitter has waned as a lead generator, but I still have fun there!”

Stop checking social networks every few minutes

This bit of advice came from Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich. It applies both to personal and business usage of social networks.

Especially when you get started, checking every Facebook post multiple times a day and hoping that it will grow to millions overnight is not productive. You know the idiom, “watching grass grow.” That’s what you’re doing when you check your social channels obsessively. If it goes “viral,” great. If it doesn’t, watching it won’t make it grow any faster.

[bctt tweet=”Checking your social media posts every few minutes won’t magically make them go viral.” username=”manamica”]

Also, stop looking at analytics reports every week. If you have millions of users, sure, you will be able to see trends on a weekly basis. But when you’re in the hundreds or in the thousands of visitors, you simply won’t be able to collect enough data in a week to make any significant calls.

Stop obsessing, and rather spend that time developing more content that’s meant to help, uplift, and/or entertain your audiences.

Stop trying to engage celebrities

Stop, “following and attempting to engage major celebrities, particularly ones who are on social media but not into social media,” says Dirk Lester, digital marketer with The Pixel Project.

Even celebrities that engage back are bombarded with messages. It will be very hard to make yourself heard in that noise. But many celebrities and influencers just don’t care to engage. It’s easy to tell. Just look to see if they share anyone else’s content. If they don’t, move along.

Also, don’t fall for the “number of followers makes an influencer” trap. Many Instagram “influencers” bought their way to many followers. An app store search returned too many “gain followers” apps to count. I stopped counting at 50…

You’re better off finding 50 real fans, who have a fair following (around 1,000) followers and good engagement (on Instagram look for 5-10% engagement rate – “likes” divided by follower count x100). Build relationships with them. Encourage them to be your spokespeople. You’ll get better traction this way.

[bctt tweet=”Your real IG influencers may have only 1,000 followers, but are true fans who get 5-10% engagement” username=”manamica”]

Stop doing things you don’t want to do

This piece of advice came from Sherrie Rohde, Community Manager at Magento, and when I read it I had that “of course!” moment.

Here’s the problem with doing things you don’t want to do – you’ll keep looking for reasons why it won’t work, shouldn’t work, shouldn’t be done etc.

I truly believe that there are companies out there that shouldn’t invest in social media marketing, simply because the leadership doesn’t believe in it and thus they don’t want to do it. And it’s going to be a complete waste of time and resources. Your social media team will spend all their time trying to convince the decision makers, instead of doing marketing. So don’t do it.

Now, if all your business decisions are based on “don’t want to,” you’ll have serious problems. But that’s another blog post…

Stop posting.

Start conversations instead.

90% of the times when I talk to companies about their social media like Instagram, they bring up “posting.” And Instagram questions such as how much, how often etc.

Stop focusing on the mechanics of keeping your social streams fresh. Start focusing on what you’re saying and how to truly get in front of the right people. You may need to spend 80% of your efforts “chatting” with key individuals online, instead of posting.

[bctt tweet=”Everybody “posts.” What’s your unique contribution?” username=”manamica”]

What are some other things we should stop doing on social media?