The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media

If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to get some religion about leveraging social media for your organization or cause. But beware, the road is treacherous and the temptations many. We’ve divined a list of the most common sins to avoid in order to achieve social media salvation.

Sin #7. Wandering the Desert  

Determine Your Goal – Determine your goals and how social media, as a tool, can help you accomplish them. Don’t focus on your number of followers, but rather determine metrics that are aligned with your business or organizational goals. Your needs will change, so you’ll need to adjust your goals over time. 

Sin #6. Preaching to the Infidels

Know Your Audience – Find out as much about your audience as you can. Find out who they are, where they are, when they’re online, and what they’re talking about. Don’t over-promote, rather look to engage your audience and share useful information.

Sin #5. Speaking in Tongues

Develop a Voice – How does your company or organization want to present itself? Determine this and be consistent in the language you use in your posts and the type of content you share. 

Sin #4. Don’t Just Let the Spirit Guide You

Plan Your Content – Have a well-defined idea of the content you want to create and share with your audience. While a lot of social media content is ‘on the fly’ with news and events happening constantly, it’s helpful to understand the types of content you want to share and create. A content calendar will also help you plan for what is coming up and allows you time to develop content.

Sin #3. Having No Shepherd

Choose a Person to be in Charge – Determine who on your team or organization will be responsible. Learn how the systems work and how users interact on the platform. Learn and utilize the language to become an active member.

Sin #2. Worshipping False Gods

Pick Your Tools Carefully – There’s no need to be on every social media platform if you can’t manage them. Use what works for you and then add other platforms if needed. When you have multiple accounts look into streamlining your efforts using tools. Two easy-to-use tools that help streamline efforts are:

1. Hootsuite – a great tool for posting to your social media accounts, monitoring your mentions and messages and also allows for scheduling of posts so you can pre-plan your sends.
2. Google Alerts – a great tools to monitor and alert you to relevant and recent information related to keywords you determine. These alerts can also help generate content ideas.

Sin #1. Sloth

Get Started – You can read about all the tips and tricks. Initially, you can just be an observer.  But, at some point you will need to get started. See what does and doesn’t work for you, analyze and adjust. But don’t be afraid to get started. 

Godspeed!

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