Is your social media strategy “everyone’s doing it, so we should too”?

Read through this list, and give yourself one point for every social media offense you think you or your company may be committing.

1. Opening an account, and then rarely or never using it. With social media pages ranking higher on search engines all the time, and sometimes even replacing search engines themselves (Facebook is the second most visited site on the Internet), your page on that site may be the first thing a potential customer sees. It’s like walking into a store and the shelves are almost bare. They’re probably not going to stick around?
   Bonus point if your company's contact information is also out of date or incomplete.
2. Constantly posting without a clear message or plan. Just as bad as not posting anything, filling your page with constant random content doesn’t help either. Relevant posts that reinforce that show you are a content authority in your industry posted occasionally will be more effective than those three trendy meme’s you posted this morning.
3. Trying to be on every platform because it’s the next big thing. So you’ve put together a plan and written some great content that really shows you know your industry and it’s audience. Now it’s time to start posting on every platform for the greatest exposure, right? No. Utilize multiple platforms, but know where your audience is most likely to be.
4. Using software to write once and then post to all your accounts. Using services such as Hootsuite are a great way to use and monitor all your social media accounts under one roof (and we can show you how). But using them them to write once, post multiple is surefire way to start losing your audience. Different social media sites offer different experiences, so offer different content that plays to their strengths.
   Another bonus point if you use a social media site to simply link to your posts on another.
5. Not engaging with your audience. Keep the social in social media. Sure, scheduling your posts is a great way to plan out a short term strategy, but don’t schedule them for the same time every day. Users have become wise to the social media robots, and will tune them out. Show that there’s still a human on the other end, respond to comments and questions in a timely manner. And while you're there take some time to review your posts. Are you simply regurgitating content from your website, or you starting a conversation around that content?
6. Arguing with your audience, rants, and other inappropriate posts. Just a gentle reminder that once something’s on the Internet, it’s there forever.