While it takes ages to build a strong online reputation for your brand, it just takes five minutes to kill the impression. Sometimes, the smallest of things (actually biggest of big) if uncared of, or taken too casually, will lead to a major pitfall.
Here, we discuss six ways you are sabotaging your brand performance in social media.
- Incomplete profile:
Probably the biggest sin, ever, is to have an incomplete social media profile. Having an incomplete, partially complete, outdated, social media profiles of your brand not only bring down the overall impression but also send a negative note about your company culture. Having a poorly maintained profile is highly unprofessional and in a sense, shows general indifference towards marketing or social media management.
To avoid being blacklisted in the social media circuit, maintain a short, crisp, and updated profile. A few words about your brand, some important facts (date of launch, category, the line of service, etc.) will do. Post regular updates about company happenings, events, and new releases.
- Choosing incorrect social media image sizes:
Not using the right social media image size is one of the biggest mistakes ever made. Your profile picture or display picture is the first thing someone notices about your profile. Most people are of the perception that a passport size photo perfectly fits into the square block reserved for the profile picture, not realizing the minor differences in dimension could make or mar the impression. The same picture will appear very small in Facebook or stretched out of proportion on Twitter. The same applies to cover images. Here, we provide the standard image sizes for some major social networks:
- Facebook profile picture: 170 X 170 pixels
- Facebook cover photo: 828 X 465 pixels
- Twitter profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels
- Twitter header image: 1,500 X 500 pixels
- LinkedIn profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels
- LinkedIn banner image: 646 X 220 pixels
- Instagram profile picture: 110 X 110 pixels
- Pinterest profile picture: 150 X 150 pixels
- YouTube profile picture: 800 X 800 pixels
- Using inconsistent handles across social networks:
How does it feel when you go to an old friend’s place, a stranger opens the door asks who you are? You kinda feel lost, right? You ask about your friend, and then you are let in. the same thing works for your social media profile. Your brand may be represented by its logo on Twitter, but by some other picture on Facebook or Instagram. It leads to confusion and sets a precedent about brand reputation management. Having consistent profile photos will increase your chances of having people follow you on different social networks. The more attention your logo gets, the higher are the chances of being recalled when people think of similar products/services.
- Not adding keywords to your profiles for SEO:
Social media profiles often go unnoticed because appropriate keywords are not used for SEOs. People fail to find your brand. Using relevant keywords for promoting your product/service improves brand visibility. If you belong to a niche segment, for example, manufacturing learning resources for visually impaired students, choose appropriate keywords like “reading”, “visual impairment”, “adaptive equipment” or “Braille”. Make sure that related terms should appear in your LinkedIn job title, job description, and skills. These terms should also appear in your bio copy, in photo names, interests, and experience.
Keyword tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner can help you find the right words or terms to promote your brand across social media networks.
- Using invalid links:
Nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a broken link when you are trying to find something important. It makes the user feel cheated and leads to believe that the company does not care for its customers. Having a broken link also points to your inefficient resources and lack of due diligence.
To avoid this, check your links every week, to make sure they are working fine, and remove the ones not working or outdated. This is very important since a link on your social media profile might be used as a CTA, a redirect to your website, or to point someone to your business’ landing page.
- Being irregular with posting:
Nothing is worse than ghosting out after a series of posts. I once knew of a company which would only post once or twice a year to inform users of changes in management. Another company I know posts only of new recruitments. Needless to say, most of the times these posts go unnoticed because, in social media, users do not care much for infrequent postings.
Post regularly in the social media networks, to avoid being lost in the crowd. Brands with regular postings always remain ahead of others. Post something that promotes a strong piece of content might be an important message, landing page, offer, blog post, video or other media asset. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson posts articles every day, engaging readers’ attention. Oracle posts short duration videos for sharing industry insights, and promoting their own products.
Surprised? Scared? Or shocked? Are you sure your organization does not make any of the above-mentioned mistakes? Find out now. Quite often we fail to reap the returns of our efforts, because of the loose ends or casual glitches that bring down the impression. That is because we want the sign on the billboards to remind us of our favorite shoe store, and not something else.
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