Social Media Misuses

By: Sarah Jones

There is a list on Mashable with 15 ways that people commonly misuse social media. While, the list is pertaining more towards people in general, I think some things on the list can pertain specifically towards public relations and social media professionals. Using social media platforms for personal use is very different from using it for your company. If you post something you shouldn't on your personal social media platforms you are only affecting yourself and some of your followers, if your profile is on private. However, if you work in social media for a corporation, accidentally posting something risky could cost you your job and the integrity of the company. That's why it's important to  make sure you are using every resource and being smart about your job in social media. It's a lot harder than people think.

The very first thing on the list is to make sure you have a plan. This is so important when working in social media. If you don't have a plan things tend to get messy very quickly. Knowing what you're going to do in advance saves you and the company from having a mess to clean up.

Source via Social Media Today

Other things on the list that I think are important is to not work alone or spread yourself to thin. That's why most companies have a team of people that are there just for managing the companies social media platforms. If you have one or two people managing 6 or 7 different sites it can get overwhelming and time consuming. However, if that's all the company has there are different ways to plan it accordingly. A social media plan is always a great and efficient start to push you in the right track for making smart social media decisions. For Twitter, using sites like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allows you to keep up with many different hashtags and newsfeeds at the same time. You can even schedule your tweets ahead of time so that would be one less thing you would have to post. However that could also get you into trouble with repetitive, boring content. 

Boring content is another misuse on the list which is definitely something you want to ignore. If you post the same content everyday the audience is going to get tired of reading your posts, skip right over it and probably unfollow you. You need to make sure you come up with engaging tweets and mix them up every so often in order to keep your readership and followers. This also could go along with posting in real time. Countless of brands have gotten into the habit of posting relevant content at the time it's happening. This means you will have to be working even when you're not in the work place. It would be a huge mistake to miss out on what is going on in the world and not including your company in the topic. For example, when the lights went out during last years Super Bowl Oreo was the first brand to immediately make a statement on the situation. It was a genius tweet and got everyone's attention. As a social media professional that is what you should strive to be like. Be smart, creative, and stay relevant in today's fast-paced world.