5 Social media mistakes to avoid

As we all know using social media is one of the key areas to develop in growing your online profile and making people aware of your brand. When done correctly social media can work wonders for your agency, done poorly and it could spell goodbye to your online presence!

To help you all out I’ve come up with a list of the top 5 social media mistakes to avoid:

• Over the top automation:
  Be human not a robot! Don’t just schedule and a send a load of tweets or posts, actually get involved and engage with people. Take part in online discussions, LinkedIn groups and hash tag conversations, a great one being #RecruiterHour every Tuesday between 8-9pm (GMT).

• Badly branded profile:
  Keep it simple and on brand. There is nothing worse than a profile with a mixture of different colours, photos and branding that doesn’t match or have anything to do with your agency. Brand match your profile with your employer.Use your company colour, logo and remember no on likes the twitter egg! Get yourself a relevant profile picture, chances are you already have one on LinkedIn.

• Not tracking performance:
  lf your using social media to connect with potential candidates and post job ads you need to work out what messaging works and what doesn’t. When posting job ads use a link shortener so you can track clicks. One way of phrasing a job ad may result in significantly more clicks, vital information when calculating your social ROI. Check out http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url. A shortner will also save vital space when limited to set number of characters.

• Not replying:
  One of the worst things you could is not reply to someone, whether this is a retweet or a message ignoring them is not going to go down well and could damage your reputation. Social media requires timely responses, leaving someone hanging just increases the chances of them going else where. Obviously there are limits, if someone messages you at 3 in the morning you can’t be expected to jump up and reply, just send a reply or thank you when you get a chance.

• Be social, don’t shout:
  Read back through your social media posts and imagine yourself saying them at a networking event. Are you the person at the event that shows no interest in other attendees and just talks about yourself? Mix things up, don’t just talk about yourself, get involved with the world around you!

By following these 5 simple tips and avoiding the mistakes you’ll be social media savvy in no time. If you’ve had any social media mishaps or have other tips on what to avoid get involved and let us know.