Heroes in Business - 16 Critical Things to Avoid Doing on Social

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

There are a lot of ineffective common practices with content marketing hurting businesses. Here you will learn to avoid the top 16 mistakes that do not help to be perceived the way you want to be in this episode of Social Media on Steroids with Dan Shinder  

Hi, and welcome to the Social Media on Steroids podcast. I'm Dan Schindler, and I created the Social Media on Steroids brand of education, training, consulting, and services to help others learn from my experience of achieving extraordinary results with content marketing on social. I attracted a following of over 1 million people and reach millions more online each month, 100% organically. In this series, I share the strategies that helped me cross all the milestones it took to get there and that we still use. And please, before we dive in, take down my email address in case you have questions. I answer all questions and I take suggestions for topics to be covered in this

series. You can reach me directly at dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com. And of course, the website is the same URL. Follow the blog there and the Advanced Social Marketing YouTube YouTube channel. Okay, let's jump in. Okay, welcome to episode 10, 16 critical things to avoid doing on social. And everyone you know, wink wink, is making at least a few of these errors. If you are, change these ineffective practices now. Be mindful of your purpose for posting on social and how you want to be perceived versus how you may be perceived by others. Often, it is not the same. So this ties into, well, some of it's etiquette and some of it is also just some tooling. And I'll get into that and explain as we go. Mostly for Facebook and Instagram, but a lot of it also applies to LinkedIn and anywhere else where you are posting.

And the way I came up with this list, quite honestly, is after being on social for 10 years and after being on as a business for nine and after having a podcast for a couple months or so, whatever it's been, yeah, about two and a half months, I finally decided, since I scroll through the feed every day on different platforms, I have finally got to point some of these out and save some people from their own demise.

Now, please don't be offended by this. Everything I teach works. Everything I teach comes from the own demise. Now, please don't be offended by this. Everything I teach works. Everything I teach comes from the right place, my heart, and for wanting you to get better results. Seriously, now some people are gonna tune out and just not even listen to this whole thing. One, because they will be making some of the mistakes, errors, bad practices, I point out,

whatever we wanna call them, and they'll say, well, everyone else is doing it. So this guy must be wrong. And that's incorrect. Or they're going to listen and they still might just continue on with their ill-fated practices. Please trust me on this. So let's get started. Okay. 16 critical things to avoid doing on social. One, if you're on Facebook, and you should be, 3 billion people. There's some people there that might be interested in who you are, what you do. Don't run your personal Facebook page like a business page, or technically it's called a fan page, without having a fan page. If you have a fan page or a business page, don't run your personal page as if it's that page. Keep them

separate. What I mean is if you want to post on your personal page about your business stuff, share it from your fan page so when people click on it, it tracks back to that page. That's where you want people to follow you for business. My personal boundaries, on my personal page, I post maybe 20% of the time is business. It might be something really special we're doing on Drum Talk TV. Really special. It's got to be really, really rare. Something rare.

For this business, Social Media on Steroids, the company's called Advanced Social Marketing, actually, I post when these new episodes come out and maybe a couple other things other than that you scroll up and down it's my wife and I sitting outside at night by our fire pit it's my cat, it's my flowers I'm watering in the morning maybe something with the kids or the grandkids once in a while

my cat, some more flowers, birds, a lizard here and there some travel stuff, my cat, my cat and then Sage oh, Sage is my cat, some more flowers, birds, a lizard here and there, some travel stuff, my cat, my cat, and then Sage. Oh, Sage is my cat. So personally, that's just me. You don't have to do that. But if you're going to post business material on your personal profile, share it from your business page. And your business page should not be in a personal profile format where people can friend you. It should be a fan page where people can follow you and like the page. This is very important. And some people say, I'm going to wait till I have 3,000 friends and then convert it to a fan page. There's no point in that. You are missing out if you don't

take advantage of all the tools. Let me rephrase that. All the wonderful, helpful tools that come with the Facebook fan page that you don't have with a personal page. That's a whole other episode, just that right there, the analytics and what to watch what not to watch how they help you and all that stuff so are we clear on this let's move on to number two number two only you should be able to post on your personal profile timeline on Facebook so many people have their Facebook settings so that other people can post on your page. Why would you do that? Why would you want just anybody to be able to post on your page? Why? I can't even imagine. Can't think of one reason. I can't think of one reason. I don't mean to sound offensive, but this really winds me up.

When people, because you know, there's a lot of people out there that'll do something and tag 40 people just to let them know about the post. They had nothing to do with the event in the post, but they'll tag other people because they think that's marketing. That's not marketing. That's not promoting. That's not advertising.

That's freaking annoying. Stop tagging 20, 30, 40 people. Stop tagging anyone who isn't part of the subject matter. And if your page lets other people post on your page, when they tag you, it automatically goes on your page. Why would you allow that? It doesn't make any sense. Fix that.

Go into settings. Who can post on your page? Change it to only me. Okay, got it? Ready, ready, go. Here we go. Number three, do not wish yourself a happy birthday on your personal page. I know some of these sound silly and elementary because you don't do them, but

there's a lot of people listening. I know you do this and I don't mean to be like, make it sound like a browbeating session. It's not. I just, I'm real passionate about helping people get their bleep together with content marketing. These critical things to avoid doing are going to help you, help you be perceived more as a professional, more of someone who knows how it works, what the etiquette is, how the tools work, how the platforms work, okay? It's all to be helpful. So again, number three, do not wish yourself a happy birthday. I see all the time, happy birthday to me today. Why do that? Other than just to get people's attention to wish you a happy birthday. It serves no purpose, no value whatsoever. Now, on your business page, depending on how that page is run. So Drum Talk TV is really not my business page. It's the business

page of the company I founded. I'm one of the many people that work for Drum Talk TV. I happen to be the founder, the CEO, the executive producer, primary host, and the cat litter box changer. So on Drum Talk TV, when my birthday comes around, someone puts together a birthday post for the founder, Dan Schindler, with a video of little clips from interviews and things I've done. That just happens to be me. But I'm not posting on my page saying, here's my birthday. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. Okay, let's move on to number four, kind of related to birthday, well, totally related to birthdays as well. If you know someone, how do I say this? If you know someone that's famous, if you've met someone that's famous, I see this so much in the music industry. I've seen it elsewhere as well,

but a lot in the music industry. If you know someone who's famous or you've just met someone once that's famous and you got your picture taken with them when it's their birthday, I'm just going to use an example. Let's say it's a real famous author. We'll do that one first, then musicians. Let's say it's a real famous author. You met him once, got your picture taken with him at a book signing. If you wish him happy birthday, don't just post happy birthday to Michael Port. Here's me with Michael. So what? No one cares. It's almost disingenuous. And there's one guy on social, oh my God, well, I'll get to him when we talk about music. Wish them a happy birthday in a genuine way and why you care about them. What value have they brought to your life, your business,

the way you think, the way you perceive, the knowledge that you gleaned from their book, if they're an author, and put a cover, maybe a cover of your favorite book by them. Not just a picture of you hanging out. So what? You're not impressing anybody. Same thing in the music industry. I see this all the time. There's one particular individual, every time it's some rock star's birthday or something he posts 70 pictures of of whoever it is so what and none of the discrete none of the pictures have any descriptions so you don't know whoa that's an interesting picture when was that oh there's an old one that's black and white where was that who was she playing with then there it's like it's no one's gonna look through all that you're not impressing anybody. Be genuine in wishing someone a happy birthday. On Drum Talk TV, when we wish a

big artist a happy birthday, or even a not-so-known artist, we don't show a picture of me with my arm around them or them at my house for dinner. We show a video of them doing what the world appreciates them for. So be mindful of how you want to be perceived because your content is going to determine that. Okay? Normally, I don't get into the personal profile stuff on channels, but this is important. All those things so far work the same way on LinkedIn other than don't let other people post on your page. All right, can we move on? Let's move on.

Number five. Oh, this is a biggie. Don't ask people whether you're a business on your business page or anywhere. Never ask people, like, comment, and share. People know how it works. It's like holding your hands out face up and placating. If your content isn't compelling enough for people to do it, learn how to create content that will inspire them to do so.

Content that's informative. Content that will edify them. Content that will educate them. Content that will entertain them. Make them laugh. Give them value. Enrich their lives. Give them some takeaways and reasons to keep following you. Don't ask people to like, comment, and share. And I know a guy that can help you with creating content like that. Okay. Don't use, oh my gosh, I may only see this in the music industry as well. No, maybe food as well. Don't ask best. When you're asking a question, what's the best drum head to get? What's the best ride symbol? What's the best sushi knife? What's the best salad ingredients? What's the best? There is no best. Guess what? I hate to break your model of the world, but there

is no best. There's favorites. I have a favorite. You have a favorite. She has a favorite. My 11 kids have favorites. Our 19 grad kids have favorites. Our cat Sage has favorites. I have a favorite. You have a favorite. She has a favorite. My 11 kids have favorites. Our 19 grad kids have favorites. Our cat Sage has favorites. Believe me, you, she has favorites. All right. Don't ask people what's the best when the topic is something subjective. Okay. We clear on this. This is to help you. I promise this is to help you all. There's more. If you haven't come across one that you're doing, you might. And if you haven't, that's awesome. A plus.

Help others that you see and you will who are doing it and save them. All right, where did we leave off? Here we go. Don't like your own posts. Eight years ago or so, there was this myth that if you like your own post, it puts it back in the news feed for people. No, never. Not now. Not in the newsfeed for people. No, never, not now, not in the future. Stop doing that. Of course you like it. You created it.

It looks like, yeah, you just don't know how this stuff works. It looks a little bit, well, just don't do it. Can we just leave it at that? Just don't do it. All right. Number eight of 16. We're halfway through when I finished this one. Do not operate in a fishbowl. What does that mean? Do not operate in a fishbowl. I'm going to give a couple examples. On your personal page, if you're connected with people outside your zip code, and most of you probably are, some of you are not, and that's fine. There's no right or wrong. But if you're connected to people in other states, in other countries, in other provinces, don't post something that says, traffic on I-95, exit 36. That's only 10% of the people you're connected with on Facebook are going to see that. And it might apply to 1% of them, and they might not see it.

Don't use fishbowl thinking. On your business page, oops, on your fan page, don't post. And this is, again, I love these ideas, but be careful how you frame the way you say things. So let's say Friday tips at five. If you are connected with people outside of your zip code or outside your time zone, Friday tips at five doesn't mean anything. Five where? 5 a.m., 5 p.m., 5 Eastern Europe, 5 in Singapore, 5 in Pacific time, U.S. Don't use times unless you're going to say the time zone you're referring to. And chances are, unless you're doing it live, no one's going to see it right at that time, so it becomes irrelevant right

away. Do those live if you're going to do that. And you could say, hey, this is Friday tips at 5, 5 p.m. Pacific time. Why do I call it that? Well, that's where we're based here in Los Angeles. That's not where I am. I'm just using an example. Not that it matters. Just trying to give some context. So don't use fishbowl thinking in, I call it fishbowl thinking when we don't think beyond the walls of our office or outside our neighborhood, but yet we're connected to people way outside those areas. Hopefully that makes sense. All right, here we go. Second half. Maybe you need a stretch. Give a good stretch, there you go. Hopefully I'm stretching your mind,

stretching the boundaries of how to post in a manner where you'll be perceived more like you want to be perceived. All right, here we go. Do not use the Facebook Messenger feature to market yourself to everyone at once that you're connected to. Most people are not even in your target market. And that's a guess on my part. Some people are only connected to people in their

target market. But I'm guessing a lot, an educated guess, a lot of us have people outside of that. I know that I do in both businesses. There's a lot of people I'm connected to that my business isn't relevant to them, not either of them. And that's totally okay. And then when you say, hold your finger down and share it with everyone else. Well, guess what? If I'm watching this on a PC or a laptop, yeah, for three weeks, I was an idiot holding my finger on the screen going, well, now what is this supposed to do? Maybe I'm supposed to pick my left foot off the ground. I don't know. That's another way of fishbowl thinking. But when you blast something to people like that, messaging everybody, if it's not relevant to me, it's like, oh, hey, what about

the how you doing, Dan? What about that? How are you in NJ? How's Sage? How are things in Globe, Arizona? It's just, use a proper email list client for this. Use MailChimp. Use constant contact. Use something proper that will send the right content out to the right people you're connected to on the right list with purpose. Okay? Let's see. Oh, number 10. Don't post multiple photos in one post that are clearly different from each other and without putting unique descriptions.

A lot of people, they post three, five, ten photos of something. Maybe it's at an event. Maybe they're on a trip. Whatever it is. Remodeling the house. Could be business related. But once there's more than one photo, the description of the post won't go into each photo. Now, remember, a lot of people, most people are primarily using mobile devices on social, whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram is only mobile, et cetera, et cetera. Twitter, if you post more than one photo, chances are they're going to click on it so they see it larger, especially on the phone. If there's more than one photo, it's not automatically going to put that same description

in all the photos. So you need to go in and copy and paste the description in all the photos. But as I said in the beginning of this point, if the photos are clearly different, maybe that initial description for the post isn't enough. Maybe it needs a little more explanation for each unique post. Tell the story. Successful content marketing on social is all about storytelling. Don't leave them wondering. Don't leave them hanging. Otherwise, it's a big so what. So do the extra work. Everything I teach requires extra work. I'm going to be very transparent about that. Do the extra work. Everything I teach requires extra work.

I'm going to be very transparent about that. Everything I teach requires extra work, but everything I teach will get you results, I promise. I do not care about shortcuts. I care about results primarily. If I can get the same results with a little bit of a shortcut because I want to be efficient, I'm good with that. But most of the time, it's going to take the extra steps to get the best results.

All right. most of the time it's going to take the extra steps to get the best results. All right. Number 11. Don't post into groups natively. So what I mean is if you're posting for your business and you're posting into groups, let's say you're an entrepreneur and you offer a service. Let's say it's social media marketing consulting or courses like I do. And that's fine if you do. That's great. I work with people all the time in my space and teach them things that they didn't know and they teach me things I didn't know. Hey, we should all be learning, right? So let's say you do social media and you're sharing into an entrepreneur group. Ah, I said sharing. Make sure you share from your fan page. If you have a handy tool you want people to know about, share it from your

business page on Facebook. Don't post natively into that group because it won't track back to your page. Share from the business page into the groups. It'll track, it's the breadcrumbs to bring them back. And if everything's together with that post and everything's together on that page, it should send them to your website. There's a whole science behind the whole sharing thing. I'm gonna do a YouTube video on that

because it's very demonstrative. I might do a podcast as well, but just audio, I'm not sure it would translate. It won't translate the same well. So watch for that. I'll put that up on the list, way up on the list. So share into groups. Don't post natively into groups, okay? Do share or curate, in quotes, do share other content to your page,

or curate, in quotes, do share other content to your page, but do not do it without adding a comment as to why you're sharing it. So a lot of people will find something interesting, they'll share it to their page, and they won't say why. And that, again, is kind of a big so what. Okay, that's an interesting article, but Dan, why did you share it? Dan, what does that mean to you? Dan, did you help with that? Do you know them? Are you part of that book or that event or whatever that is? Say something. Here's a great article by Ted Padromo about LinkedIn, growing your following on LinkedIn. Check this out.

It worked for me. That's the comment I would put if I were to share such a post, and I'm sure I will be again. Hopefully, that all makes sense. Scrolling down to number lucky, number 13. Got a daughter who was born on the 13th, and she's a true angel. Okay. Hi, Samantha. All right. I'm going to touch on hashtags, but please take a deep dive on my social media on StairRage Podcast episode six, you will hear me talk crazy about hashtags. You will learn a whole new way of doing hashtags that no one you know is using and no one you know

is saying and no one you know believes in unless they've taken one of my workshops, courses, or have listened to that episode. It's different from how everybody talks about it. So here's my touch on for the 16 critical things to avoid doing on social, how it relates to hashtags. Don't put hashtags or at mention tags for that matter in the language of your diction of a paragraph in a post. So don't say, I went to hashtag Malibu Beach with Dan Schindler and we shot a hashtag how to grow your following video and hashtag grow your following.

Don't, the brain was not taught to read language like that. Put the tags all at the end of the post. They have just as much value. Chances are, no offense, but chances are, with all the love in the world, all the caring in the world about what you do, wanting you to succeed and thrive and flourish, chances are you're using all these tags incorrectly anyways. Right after this, take a stretch and dart over to my episode number six and learn how hashtags can help you in ways you never imagined. I promise it will be high opening. Okay. Don't put it in the language. Here we go. Number 14, do not, aside from hashtags, this has got to be tied for my first or it's my second biggest

pet peeve of what I see on social. Other than TikTok, other than Instagram, if you're shooting voodoo, if you're shooting videos, especially a voodoo, if you're shooting videos for any other platform besides Instagram or TikTok, do not, I repeat, do not, do not hold your smartphone vertically. It's narrow. It's claustrophobic. It looks like you're peeking through a cracked open door, and it doesn't fill the way video players are shaped. Hey, you ever watch videos on Facebook?

Hey, you ever watch videos on Vimeo? Hey, you ever watch videos on YouTube or your flat screen or your PC or your laptop? Guess what? The video players are shaped like horizontal rectangles. If you turn your phone that way, your videos will be shaped that way. You will put out a much better product rather than looking like you don't know how it works. Know how it works. Get the better results. Turn your camera. You could do it with lefties too.

Lefties can do this. Just turn it in your left hand horizontal. It works for everybody. Please stop the madness. For the love of whatever you believe in, stop the madness. Don't shoot vertically anymore with a smartphone. There's zero reason to unless that video is only

for Instagram or TikTok. And even if you shoot horizontally for all your other channels, because that's where your biggest following is, you want the videos to look best there, it'll still work on Instagram or TikTok. It'll still work. Okay, number 15, second to last. For those of you still with me,

I commend you and I thank you for putting up with me. So you can learn and get better results. Number 15, do not use links to your own videos on other channels. Load videos natively to each of your own channels. Example, don't have a video on YouTube that you grab the link from and put it on LinkedIn or Facebook or anywhere else. There's no reason to do that. If it's your video, upload it natively to each unique platform. If you don't do that, each platform that you share a foreign link to from a foreign platform, they're going to squash the reach on that because they don't

like that. It's important to know how these algorithms work. Ta-da! Drum roll. You ready for number 16? Here we go. Out. That hurt. Don't just promote and advertise. That's not marketing. Advertising and promoting is not marketing. They are different from marketing. Refer to my episode seven of the Social Media on Stereoids podcast to learn all about that. Don't just do promoting and advertising because people will stop following you. If all you keep posting is what's for sale, what's for sale, what's for sale, here's my book, here's my event, here's my DVD, I'm doing a talk, here's my webinar, here's my seminar. Here's my... Don't just promote what you're doing. Give people a reason to keep following you. Give people value.

Give stuff away all the time. That's what I love about these podcasts. They cost you nothing but your time. And even though your time's the most valuable thing you have besides your health, it's still free, free education that I promise will help you. Offer that for other people as well. So there you go. 16 critical things to avoid doing on social. Write me. Let me know what your favorite one was that helped you. Let me know what your favorite one is that you're so tired of seeing other people do. Write me, write me, write me. When you post, post with purpose. Use objectivity.

Offer value. Be mindful of your purpose for posting on social and how you want to be perceived versus how you may be being perceived by others. Often, it's not the same. Apply what I teach and begin getting better results immediately. Guaranteed. Much more to be covered in these episodes. If you have a topic, if you'd like me to cover something, write me a suggestion.

Dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com. Want to learn more? Need your team trained? Need a service provider who knows how it really works and teaches from the hands-on experience of achieving amazing results. Or if you just have questions, reach out, reach out, reach out. Thanks so much. Happy marketing.

So remember, if you're serious about what you do, get serious about how you market it. Sign up for my newsletter and get my six steps to daily success PDF at at advanced social marketing.com and get notifications about my free workshops and other learning opportunities as well as the wacky changes on the major platforms stay up to date and see how i can help you further at the same url check out the blog there and follow the advanced social marketing youtube channel as well. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn at Happy Marketing!