Don’t Share THAT on Your Business Social Media Profiles!

As business use of social media explodes, some brands thrive while others are still figuring out the best way to leverage this powerful tool to connect with customers and clients. Many generally accepted rules of what to share and what not to share exist and most businesses are savvy enough to understand these general concepts: don’t rant, don’t insult, don’t gossip, stay on topic, be kind and always stay on brand.

In additional to the basic rules of social media, and--frankly--rules of being a good citizen, recent research shows us some of the most annoying habits of brands and businesses on social media. Before you share your next social media post, be certain you know what your audience wants and what really chaps their hide!

Sprout Social, a social media management software company, publishes a quarterly report with data and insights on social media trends. The Q3 2016 Sprout Social Index report highlights the most annoying social media behaviors by businesses according to brand followers. Naturally, we loved this insight. Here are some of the tidbits we found most useful:

Tone:

• 38% of people find the use of slang irritating
• 32% of followers find it annoying when a brand tries to be funny (and isn’t!)
• 34% of people find a lack of personality to be just plain bad

Content:

• 41% of people will unfollow a brand that doesn’t share relevant information
• 60% of followers get annoyed with too many promotions

Responsiveness:

• 25% people are annoyed when a brand doesn’t respond (with only 10% of messages on social receiving a reply from brands, it’s likely that many followers are seriously bugged!)

The Roaring Pajamas take? Sprout Social’s findings validate and are consistent with many of our key messages about social media over the years:

Tone: Infuse personality into your a business social media page and posts. But, know your limits and know your audience. We write and talk about this topic frequently, and our emoji marketing post was a fun instance of this topic. Bottom line, always stay on brand and message, regardless of how you do it.
• Content: Remain true to your expertise. Share important, insightful and relevant content with your followers and don’t always resort to selling and promotions. Show up as a trusted and knowledgeable resource and the sales will follow. While we haven’t written specifically about this guideline, our blog posts and social media posts certainly reflect this concept. We love what we do; we are great at what we do, and we want to share that with our readers and followers!
• Responsiveness: Respond promptly and with care. Social media provides businesses with a platform for customer service: use it wisely and use it well. Always respond professionally, constructively and promptly. Remember to put the customer first, and think about what they would say about you and your company if they were to write a review!

What do you think? Do you like lots of promotions from brands or does it depend on the brand and the types of promotions? What about too much or too little personality? Anything you have seen businesses share on social media that makes you cringe or really gets under your skin? Let us know!