These days, people are using social media for their business needs as well as personal needs. But, whatever the reason may be, they are bound to make some mistakes. Some of these mistakes go unnoticed and does not affect anybody much, but in the other cases, these mistakes might turn out to be disastrous. Always remember, whatever you are doing on the social media gets revealed in front of your friends and your contacts on the particular social media. So you need to be very careful while using these. Let us discuss the top 10 social networking mistakes committed by people on social media and why you should not make them.
1. Avoid Self- Promotion
The greatest mistake one can make at the social media is to think of it as a sales page rather than as a social networking platform. Even if you are using social media for business needs and nothing else, you do not have any right to put up promotion posts all over and in all the groups you can access and even in the inbox of your friends. Remember, people are on Facebook and Twitter to socialise, to have contacts with other people, not to react to your promotion posts. Putting up a post every week or telling some friend during chat is fine, but over-promotion is not good.
2. Do Not Put Inappropriate Comments
Great people have remarked that- “If you can’t say anything good, staying quiet is a better option!” there are such people who put inappropriate comments on other people’s posts all the time. They have no other work to do, just commenting on what other person has posted. Since comments on a post are publicly visible, this might put the reputation of the other person on stake as well. Hence, it is advisable to think twice when putting useless comments on other people’s posts. Better you just say Dislike or disagree then going any further.
3. Take Care of Quality, Not Quantity
If you think putting a large number of posts over the social media is going to enhance your popularity, you are definitely wrong. Even if you do not post regularly, but you post quality content, people would like you and they would wait for your posts to arrive., in the extreme cases, they might even request you to share your thoughts and start a conversation with you themselves.
4. Be Reactive
Many people just post their status expecting others to like it when they themselves do not like any other status of a friend or even have a conversation with any other person. Yes, that’s true! I have come across many people who just use Facebook to update their status and Twitter to tweet something. Then after some time, they just check how many likes have arrived and how many people have followed it. But this is not a good thing. You have to be reactive. If you cannot do anything, At least reply to people’s messages and thank them whenever they like your posts.
5. Do Not Leave Grammatical Errors
English is the major language of communication on most of the social networking platforms. But unfortunately, not many people are good at English. If you are one such person who does not know English well, make sure that you proofread your post before uploading it. Spellings and grammar errors would make you a subject of fun and laugh at the workplace. Also, your reputation would be at stake if you post such messages with errors.
6. Do Not Post When You Are Tired
I have seen many posts on Facebook which do not have any meaning. It seems like the person has posted them while he was sleeping or he was way too much tired. Even Twitter is an evidence for many of the tweets of the similar kind. This is a great mistake. If you posts meaningless stuff, people would not only think you of a fool, but if this happens twice or thrice, they are likely to delete you from their fan list. If you really want to post something, think of good words and a clear voice which can put forward your feelings and then put it there. Even thoughts that are half understood by people become a matter of laugh and gossips. Avoid it, strictly!
7. Do Not Ask Your Friends to Like Your Posts
There are people around Facebook who keep on telling their friends either in their inbox or in their posts itself that please like this status, please share this status and so on. Similar is the case with Twitter, people are asking for Re-tweets all the time. Such people never gain any respect, and after a period of time, nobody tends to like their posts or follow their tweets. Never do this kind of mistake. You don’t have to worry about your popularity. Just keep on posting good things and if people like it, they would definitely like it and share, you must not force people. Quiet people are generally followed more, this is a general tendency and you should always keep it in mind.
8. Do Not Spam Your Followers
So you want a free recharge on your mobile phone? And hence, you would put a spam message in the inbox of maximum of your friends and share the link in all the groups you are a part of? But do you think this is going to enhance your reputation in the world of social media? The answer is obvious. People who share a lot of spam on the social networking platforms are considered useless by most of the people. If you are the one who does this most of the time, stop doing it now and share some useful stuff which is revered by your fans. Chances are there that your fans and followers would unfollow you if you keep on posting such spam messages all the time. Also, your friends would lose the trust in you.
9. Do Not Fear from Posting
I know some friends of mine who never post any status or tweet anything, neither do they share anything on LinkedIn because they think their English is poor or they might not find perfect words to express their thoughts. To such people, I would like to say that this is the biggest and most stupid mistake one can ever make on the social networking platforms. And, there are a large number of people committing such kind of mistakes. Find your voice and present yourself in front of your people. Remember the cause why you are there on the particular social media, otherwise nobody is going to recognise you after a few years. Never over-think about what your post should look like. The likers would like it and haters would hate it, you can’t do anything in that, but don’t be like a dumb creature.
10. Do Not Write Novels in Your Posts
You should keep in your mind that your posts should not be very long. It is not at all a surprising fact that people do not even read such long posts. The worse thing that happens is- “Click here to read more.” What do you expect? People are going to really click and read your post? Not at all. Instead, if you would have used concise language, people would have read and understood your post and they might have liked it or followed it if it suited them. I know you all would be having some of your friend’s posting such novel-like updates all the time. Have you ever heeded to their posts? I guess no, same is the case with you. Take care of the character limit when posting statuses or tweeting. This would also give clarity to your thoughts.
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