My social media icks

When it comes to social media, it's best to stand out and be different, however some common mistakes can make you stand out of the wrong reasons.

Some other marketers may disagree with this list but I think it's a generally best to avoid these common icks to help give your posts a more professional appearance to leave a better first impression. 

Unclickable website links

Adding a URL to a graphic can often be a tell-tale sign of using a Canva design template, nothing against Canva as I use it myself but you don't want your ad to look generic or too similar to other businesses.

It's best to include a web link in the actual post/ad text where it's an active link and people can click it. That being said, adding external website links to posts does lower their potential organic reach so you don't want to do this with every post you make but if you plan on Boosting your post at all an increasing your web traffic is a key goal then you want to ensure people can actually click it to easily visit your website.

Likewise, website URLs rarely have a place in Instagram captions where they also can't be clicked. It's best to direct people to your bio or encourage DMs.

Poor readability

Chances are people will be viewing your post or ad on a mobile screen so it's important to make it readable. Taking a less is more approach helps as too much text is hard to read.

​On a similar note, no paragraph spacing can make it hard to read your post, particularly on smaller screens.

​Shorter sentences are best. Embrace the white space to improve the readability of your text. 

Hashtags on Facebook 

Hashtags can help people discover your post on Instagram and have their place there, but on Facebook not so much. Hashtags on Facebook often look messy and distract from the main message.

Unnecessary Repetition 

​Your business name and logo appear on any post you make so there's no need to waste precious real estate on including these again. Likewise there's no need to tag your business page in your post for this same reasons. I recommend writing your posts in first-person to better connect with your audience using 'I' or 'we' rather than having your business name appear multiple times.

Fishing for engagement

Using words such as like, comment, tag and share often do more harm than good, you should want people to engage with your post because it's interesting and they care about what's on offer, not because you're asking for engagement to try and 'hack the algorithm'. Instagram have also announced the use of these words can lower your reach and giveaways where tagging and sharing are required to enter actually go against Facebook's Competition guidelines.

ALL CAPS TEXT

No need to shout. 

Photo credit: Jean Clicclac, Getty Images via Canva