Rank Ranger Blog

5 Social Media Habits Users Find Annoying

October 23, 2013 |

Guest Post by Emma-Julie

People have said time and time again that old habits die-hard. This shouldn’t be much of a problem if the habits in question have little to no effect on others. However, if you’re an SEO company working on social media campaigns and the old habits you have are among those users consider annoying, then these habits may have a significantly negative impact on your business. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re in, if people find your social media habits intolerable, your business isn’t likely to enjoy much growth. Here are some of the things you need to be very careful with when launching social media campaigns:

Shares and Retweets

You may not realize this, but people have grown tired of posts that end with a request for a share or retweet. Posts of this kind make your brand appear needy and don’t offer any opportunity for engagement. The same is true of asking everyone (even people you don’t know) to contribute to your Pinterest board.

Just imagine how annoying (not to mention creepy) it would be for a complete stranger to suddenly grab you and beg to be your friend! You don’t really have to beg for shares and retweets. If you’re sure that the content you provide is useful to your target audience, then they’re likely to voluntarily share and retweet it for you.

The key is to establish a strong relationship with your audience such that they’d be more willing to share your message to others even without being told.

Images

People now appreciate visuals more than ever, which is why businesses are placing greater importance on such things as cover photos, profile pictures, and image galleries. You should therefore make your social media pages more visual as well to make it more attractive to your target audience.

Being visual, of course, starts with making sure you have a good profile picture on your social media pages. Remember that people are more likely to engage with you when they have a face to look at instead of just a logo, or worse, nothing at all.

Budweiser Facebook Cover
Example on Attractive Cover Images

Coca-Cola Facebook Cover
Example on Attractive Cover Images

To make sure your pages are filled with the right kind of images, it’s advisable for you to learn what the dimensions for cover photos on different social media sites are. It would also be wise for you to learn the basic rules of redesigning photos. Now, here’s a bit of good news:

Facebook now has more lenient rules as regards cover photos, which gives you the opportunity to use promotional photos for special events and promotions. What’s important is for you to make sure the images on your social media pages aren’t distorted or blurred, as that’s among the things users find most annoying.

Hashtags

Hashtags are meant to categorize content and provide context to your message in order to reach your target market. A lot of people, however, abuse hashtags by using as many as they can cram into one tweet. What’s even worse is that some people use hashtags on Facebook! This might make you look as if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Remember that hashtags don’t have any functional value on Facebook at all and many users find it really annoying. Some people say they use hashtags on Facebook because their Facebook and Twitter accounts are linked. Well, you may want to be more careful when you post the same content on multiple social media sites.

Proper Use of Hashtags
Use only one or two hashtags in your posts

The general rule is for you to use two to four hashtags per post, depending on the site where you’re posting. Two is the generally accepted number of hashtags per tweet and more for posts made on sites like Instagram, since images generally have more appeal to a majority of individuals. Always remember that hashtags should only be used to provide context and to make your posts more targeted.

Cross Posting

As mentioned earlier, you may want to post the same content on multiple social platforms from time to time. There’s really nothing wrong with that and it is indeed a good idea to extend the reach of your most interesting and relevant content. What you need to be careful with is the manner in which you do the posting. Many businesses choose to utilize tools like Tweetdeck for cross posting. If you choose to do the same, make sure the tool you choose doesn’t end up making your posts visually unappealing. Better yet, you could simply do the posting manually and keep the use of cross posting tools to a minimum so as not to annoy your online audience.

Frequency and Number of Posts

There are few things more annoying than getting your feed inundated by posts from the personas/groups you’ve subscribed to; more so if more than half of the posts are inane things that you’re not interested in. Conversely, you shouldn’t do this to your followers. Even when you’ve been inactive on social media for a few days (something you should avoid), you should still refrain from overcompensating with too many posts.

Set a limit as to the number of posts you make on each social media site each day and then space them out wisely. Let’s say you’ve chosen to make three Facebook posts and ten tweets each day. It is better to make one post every half hour or so rather than making all three posts and ten tweets one after the other. If you’re not sure how much is too much in terms of social media posts, you may want to consult a social media expert or at least ask family and friends what they find acceptable.

You’re using social media to get your message out there and you want to be interesting while you’re at it. Remember, though, that being interesting doesn’t include annoying your audience. The strategies you use on social media can indeed be very effective in getting the word out about your business, but you need to use them very carefully and wisely so they don’t end up backfiring on you.

Emma-Julie is professional blogger who writes for Pitstop Media Inc, a top rated SEO company in Vancouver. The company provides SEO services to businesses across North America.