7 Social No-No’s You Must Avoid

 

Social media can be an essential part of any businesses success online. It gives you the opportunity to expand your reach, increase online exposure and find new customers. Despite many people’s failures with social media, on a whole there is no doubt that it can be a great tool if used correctly.

However, with social media it is very easy to go off on the wrong path, waste your time and get zero return for your efforts. Here is a list of the 7 most common social media mistakes that estate agents commit:

1) Trying to take on too many social networks

The social network you decide to use should be based on your audience. You may think that having an account on every social network will mean you reach everyone but keeping up with one social channel is a lot of work. We always recommend you focus all your efforts on one social platform, once you have master that one then you can expand to other social networks.

2) Overselling yourself

This is the number one mistake that estate agents make, pushing your brand and product too much. Social networks aren’t the place to heavily promote as people aren’t interested in you, instead you should share informative and valuable content regarding your industry and local area. An estate agent shouldn’t only broadcast their own posts, properties and services. You should show your audience you care by entertaining and informing them regardless of if they use you. This is a critical part in the process of developing a loyal fan base.

3) Not being visually driven

Content is powerful but not so much on social media. On social media visual content is king. Every post should include a striking or appealing image.

4) Ignoring the hashtag

You should try to create hashtags as well as use trending hashtags to expand your reach and inject your brand into trending conversations.

Use tools such as Hastagify.me to identify hashtags that are related to your business.

5) Using full URLs

If you post a link into your Facebook post, Facebook will automatically generate a clickable image. This makes the link you posted redundant so it should be removed and replaced with a catchy description.

With Twitter it is important to use URL shorteners such as bit.ly, this will ensure minimal characters are wasted and you can also track link clicks.

6) Sharing too much at once

Posting all you have to say within a few minutes of each other is a great way to get people to unfollow or ignore your posts. You don’t want to annoy your audience; instead you should schedule your posts to tweet or share at optimal times. Facebook has an inbuilt scheduled post tool and you can use online tools like Hootsuite to schedule posts for Twitter.

While oversharing can cause you issues, under sharing will cause your audience to forget about you completely. Ensure you post regularly so readers won’t forget you.

7) Not measuring results

If you want to take social media seriously, you have to pay attention to the results of your posts. If your reach isn’t growing, if links aren’t being clicked and people aren’t engaging with you then clearly something is wrong. Analysing and understanding your performance is crucial to helping you find success.