Social Media Marketing Do’s & Don’ts & How To Optimize Them

8 min readMar 29, 2017

Social Media Marketing Do’s & Don’ts, are you doing it right?

22% of the world’s population use Facebook, and 76% of those users logged in every day in 2016
On any given day Snapchat reaches 41% of 18–34-year-olds in the US
81% of Millennials check Twitter at least once a day

Most people used social media for selfies and cat videos. This is no longer the case.

Social media marketing plays a bigger role in purchasing decisions. Most businesses use it to increase their visibility and interact with a one on one basis with their audience.

Just because you are on social media does not mean that you are doing it right.

There are certain rules or ethics that most businesses fail to follow when using social media marketing to reach out to the public.

Social Media Marketing Do’s

1. Have a strategy and follow a checklist

I am amazed how many business owners do not have a social media marketing plan. How do you track your metrics? Or determine the trends so that you know what resonates best with your audience? You should start by creating a plan that includes;

Assessing the various channels
Set goals ( what do you want to achieve after a given period?)
Map out a strategy and set KPIs

2. Check your privacy settings

Social media is too noisy, and you do not want all your privacy out in the open. Many hackers and stalkers are waiting to reap it off and use for their selfish purposes. Make sure to check the relevant privacy setting and set them accordingly.

3. Select And Screen our Friends

Do select and screen your new friends (in the case of Facebook)

You can segment your friend list accordingly so that your postings get to the relevant people. Watch this short video to see how to achieve this.

4. Be Real

I cannot write about social media marketing do’s & don’ts without mentioning this. Business and marketing have now become human to human. As Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer referred to in his opening speech during the Traffic Conversion Summit.

“Your business is more than B2B or B2C — it’s H2H (Human to Human).”

There is no more B2B or B2C. It is Human To Human. — Bryan Kramer

5. Provide Value

Most people do not come to social media to buy. As a business owner, you can influence them to like your products by offering valuable information or solving their pain points.

Doing this will eventually lure them to your business and make them customers down the line.

6. Create Share-Worthy Content

This you should do each time before you hit publish button. Ask yourself if the content will resonate with your audience and spur them to share it (you want them to share and spread your brand to their followers). Note that there are several reasons why people share content. According to CoSchedule these reasons include;

To bring interesting content to their followers
To grow and nourish their relationships
To get the word out about causes and brand
To define themselves to others and what they care about

7. Respond To Questions And Queries On Your Profiles

It amazes me how popular brands still fail in customer service. Many times I see their clients complaining and have queries, yet there is no response from them.

In a worse case scenario, some of these brands delete these remarks. It is bad business etiquette, and it gives your brand a bad image too.

8. Use Analytics

I often get this question from close friends who are entrepreneurs online. You need to know your metrics to be able to succeed with social media marketing.

Facebook has a build in analytics dashboard. There you can get information about your followers. It helps you;

Know the demographics of your followers
When they are most likely to be online
The kinds of content they engage the most with…and many others

Same with Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and all the other social media channels. They all have dashboards that you need to study to improve your content and interactions with your audience.

Take note of the right sidebar. It gives you valuable insights about your Facebook page and the demographics and interaction on your page. You can also get information about the types of content that your followers like, comment or share the most.

The graph at the center tells you when the majority of your followers are online. Capitalize on this and post during these peak hours to get maximum interaction and organic reach.

PS: Hover your mouse over the various days of the week (on the graph) to get the different peak times.

This second screenshot gives you an overall view of the health of your page. You can export it to an excel file and keep as part of your data.

9. Be Consistent

Set consistency in your social media marketing scheduling. Decide on how often you want to post and stick to it. Consistency will help you build a robust and loyal following.
Have you visited a brand page on Facebook or Instagram and realized that their last post was a week ago? I do not know about you, but I immediately get the feeling that they are not serious.

Be consistent and share value. If you plan to be unavailable for a period, use scheduling tools and stay connected.

Social Media Marketing Don’ts

1. Do not be spammy

Even though you want to sell our services or products, consider your audience too. Have you ever received a friend request on Facebook and almost immediately you receive a pre-written text about (your new friend) a business opportunity?

How I hate it! Do not create roadblocks at the beginning of a relationship.

2. Limit Your Automation

I understand that you cannot be 24/7 on social media to attend to the needs of your audience. Sending automated messages sometimes is a turn off to your audience. This can be bad for your social media reputation especially if these messages do not make sense or are sent to the wrong people. It is common on Instagram and Twitter and includes;

Automated Likes and Comments
Automatic direct messages
Automated follows and unfollows
The new chatbots for Facebook too ( I love it, but it should be used wisely)

To avoid this, many companies now hire social media managers to handle some of these issues while they focus on other aspects of their business ( still stressing the fact that it should be human to human)

3. Treating All Your Social Media Platforms The Same

Have you noticed people who cross-post from Instagram to Facebook with 3000 hashtags!!!!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

It looks so terrible. Hashtags are good on Instagram, but they look horrible on Facebook especially when there are many.

Same with cross-posting from Facebook to Twitter or vice versa. I do not know if these people do check their profiles to see how it looks. It is an absolute social media don’t!

4. Treating LinkedIn like Facebook

I cannot talk about social media do’s & don’ts without mentioning this. Facebook has the largest social media population. You can network with friends and family and conduct your business at the same time on it.

Linkedin, on the other hand, is a more professional site. You should treat it like your resume or a platform to network with professionals. No need sharing pictures of your dogs and cats on it. Save that for Facebook and Instagram(no offense please).

5. Focusing on Numbers

This reminds me of a client I have ( I hope he is not reading this) He is so obsessed with numbers that he bought fake followers on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (before I started working with him)

It was an uphill battle to convince him that those fake numbers do not matter. What is the need having 50k followers and almost no engagement on your post? No leads and no sales?

It is trendy to have many followers, but it serves you no purpose when there is little or no engagement, leads or sales from them.

Grow your accounts organically or use paid Ads.

6. No hashtags on Facebook

Please, people, avoid this on Facebook. Studies from Buzzsumo and other sources states that post with hashtags on Facebook in 2016 had less engagement and reached compared to those without it.

I know you may be nodding your head right now. Take a look at this report from BuzzSumo`s research from I Billion Facebook Post.

Or this very in-depth report from Social Media Today with analysis on how using hashtags on Facebook affects your reach and engagement

They all have one conclusion, hashtags have no place on Facebook. They should be limited to Instagram and Twitter where they are most appropriately welcomed.

Like all business owners, you will sometimes get negative feedbacks. But, what matters is how you handle it. You should have in mind that this is crucial to your business.

People are watching, and your online reputation is at stake.

Use negative feedbacks as a way to improve your services. You can break or make your business depending on how you handle negative comments ( social media has made it possible for angry customers to tarnish your online reputation. Beware!)

8. No Content Strategy

You can start your social media marketing activities from day one without any planning, and really, anything can be shared out to an audience. What usually happens with this approach though is that the substance of what you share becomes weak, or significant events are overlooked.

Why would someone continue to follow your brand when you are not giving them a reason to?

My advice…

What types of content do you intend to post
How do you plan on promoting this content to reach more people

To conclude, there are many social media marketing do´s, and don`ts, and I hope these example will assist you to make the right decisions. Sometimes you do these things and ignore the fact that it hurts your business

Think outside the box and try to be unique. Stick with the major channels you use already and try out something new too. You may be surprised at the results you will get from there.

What are some of the social media marketing do´s and don’ts that you encounter in your business?

Originally published at blog.apollineadiju.com on March 29, 2017.

Apolline Adiju

Apolline is a Social Media Marketing Manager / Certified Digital Marketer based in Stockholm, Sweden. Her expertise & certifications ranges from email marketing, content marketing, customer acquisition & sales funnels, paid traffic (FB, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube & Google) e-Commerce mastery & SEM. She works and assists business owners, entrepreneurs & companies (as a consultant) both in Sweden and the world (remote). She helps them build and establish strong social media / digital marketing strategies to increase their online marketing efforts & grow their business.

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