If you’ve been at it for any length of time on social media, it can start to feel like you’d rather shut down every single one of your social profiles than read yet another social media “best practices tip.” We know how you feel. Being a social media technology company, we’re constantly entrenched in the world of all things social.
Not to worry. We’re not going to do that to you today. Grab your popcorn, folks, and settle in for this quick read of several anti-tips you need to know in order to be ignored on social media. In no time at all, people will be skimming right by your content and forgetting you even exist — heck, they probably won’t even see it in the first place with your posts not appearing in feeds!
1. Don’t Be Yourself
Nothing says “likable” like a nice stock photo of someone positioned just so, in a completely unnatural way, in the type of setting you only see in movies and magazines. Like, why wouldn’t you be pausing mid-run to tie your shoe at a park bench, smiling at nothing, with a glorious backdrop of fall leaves and not a hint of perspiration on your brow?
It totally creates a connection with your audience when they see a random stranger not sweating while crushing it on their 6-mile daily run. To increase the effectiveness of this strategy, we recommend you include a few syrupy, basic hashtags like “#blessed” or “#grateful” and don’t in any way make it relevant to your audience. Better yet, try to sell something with an overly promotional and self-indulgent caption.
2: Post Haphazardly
Post on Monday morning. Post on Friday afternoon. Forget about your social media for three weeks. Post in the middle of the night after a night of taking selfies with your sorority sisters. “When will they post next?” is what your audience is thinking. If your social media isn’t a train wreck of random postings with periods of radio silence in between, you’re doing it all wrong.
Related: 3 Tips for Responding to Your Online Reviews: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. Keep ‘Em Guessing on Your Contact Info
Anyplace that lists your contact information online, make sure it’s slightly different from one site to the next. It’s best if you have at least two or three different phone numbers, addresses and websites floating around out there. Why have just one when you can have a handful? People will think you’re different, unique even. Plus, it’s super confusing to Google, Yelp and other online directories when your contact info is inconsistent, making you harder to find. Who wants all that pesky business, anyway?
4. Forget About Boosting
Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms are after you to advertise, right? Save your money! If you don’t advertise, you can make sure none of your content gets seen by customers and prospects. It’s like you won’t even exist. Plus, with the money you save, you’ll have more money leftover to buy stock photos!
5: Post Lots of Text With No Visuals
Long paragraphs of text are so much more fun to look at than engaging videos and images of your employees, customers and leaders. Be sure to include plenty of run-on sentences, typos and grammatically incorrect phrases to keep your readers engaged. Throw in an inspirational quote or two, and you’re golden!
6. Sell, Sell, Sell
The more you talk about yourself and your products or services, the more likely people are to follow your updates! Your audience is craving promotional messaging from you, not boring updates about your incredible culture, core values and philanthropic pursuits. When you’re tempted to connect with your audience on a personal level, just repeat the mantra quietly to yourself, “Sell, sell, sell.”
Related: Don’t Feed the Internet Trolls: 3 Ways to Handle Negative Online Engagements
7. Don’t Respond to Your Reviews
Someone left a bad review for you? Don’t dignify it with a response. Ignoring them makes you look like the bigger person! If you absolutely must post a response, make sure you get uber-defensive and point out all the flawed logic in your customer’s review. Not only will you drive that customer away, but you’ll also ensure that anyone reading the review doesn’t want to come to your business, either.
8. Ignore Comments and Questions
Along the same lines, don’t bother responding to anyone’s comments or questions on your posts or in your inbox. They’re old enough to figure out the answers themselves, right? And why waste time responding to someone’s comments on your post? Those friendly, supportive customers are probably just faking it, and the angry ones just need a time-out.
9. Operate in a Silo
No matter what, don’t use the insights you gain from customer interactions to improve your products, services, operations or support. People will have plenty of feedback to give you via social media, but you needn’t listen to any of them. Just keep operating in isolation so no one ever bothers you with comments or questions!
Want to Be Ignored on Social Media? Keep These Tips Handy
As you can see, it’s fairly easy to be ignored on social media once you get the hang of it. Of course, if you don’t follow these tips — and instead, you let our experts and technology do the heavy lifting of social media management for you — you may find yourself with a whole bunch of new followers, leads and customers. Your employees might find themselves engaging more with your brand on social media. And you may become much more discoverable and even likable across the web. Consider yourself warned.
Learn more: 15 Social Media Marketing Fails [Infographic]
