As effective as social media can be for committed marketing managers, you can quickly lose the thread of meaningful engagement if you fall prey to problematic issues like spamming without making quick and effective corrections. There are some core spamming practices that you can avoid simply as a measure of best practices and good manners. These spamming antics include click-baiting and likejacking, sharing undesired or excessive content and sending bulk messages.
If you are just launching your social media strategy — or you are looking for ways to refine your existing one — there are many ways to effectively use your social media presence to increase traffic to your website, grow your brand and gain loyal and lifelong customers. Explore the following four ways that you can easily avoid spamming your loyal social media followers:
1. Work on Your Pacing
Finding the right pacing for posting, especially when first getting started with any platform, is essential to avoid spamming your followers. Give your post time to reach and, hopefully, resonate with your audience before making an additional or follow-up post. After a certain time — perhaps anywhere from several hours to a full day, depending on the standard response time from your followers — give your post a bump with a second post that features additional, meaningful information.
2. Choose the Best Platform for Your Brand
Some companies thrive on Twitter or Snapchat while others find their footing at LinkedIn. Amway is one company that has truly found its voice on LinkedIn, having built a strong community of professionals where there is no time or possibility for spam. With more than 100,000 loyal followers, the 58-year-old marketing company has clearly found the best platform to suit their brand, provide helpful content and foster meaningful daily engagement. Amway uses LinkedIn as a means to share the company’s successes and ventures, as well as providing information about growth opportunities in a variety of industries; all while regularly taking the pulse of its loyal followers’ interests and information needs.
3. Use Caution When Following Others
It is easy to instantly follow someone who has followed you. Take a few moments to visit the person’s or business’s page to vet them. Search for their post history, and try to learn more about their business. If the information you gather is light, either skip following them, or do so with caution. If you pick up any spamming or other poor social media etiquette, unfollow them.
4. Turn Off the Commenting Function
If you have recently been bombarded with spam, you can quickly put a halt to it by turning off comments. You can either turn off comments for a specific post, or you can apply it to your whole page, if necessary. This solution is particularly helpful if you are running a giveaway or contest, according to Agora Pulse. You want to make sure that only your loyal followers can enter, so monitor the times that you note a high volume of spam for a few days. Once you note a pattern, don’t be afraid to schedule your contest at a time to accommodate your followers so you can keep your comments turned on.
By being yourself and true to your brand, as well as letting your customers know the value of their engagement, you can definitely launch and nurture a strong social media campaign on any platform.