Social Media Mistakes to Avoid - #SEOpodcast 227

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I am Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 227, right? Seven? Six? 227. 227. It's right there. All I have to do is look right behind me, and it tells me what podcast it is. It's all magic here. So, as always, there is a tip from our previous podcast. Our previous podcast tip is, in order to increase click-throughs on your PPC ad, make sure, and by the way, it's sounding foreign to you, right? Because I reworded your tip. Make sure you speak the language of your target audience. Yeah, you definitely want to make sure that whoever your target audience is, that you speak a language that they're comfortable with, that they're used to using. For example, if you want people to download, let's say, a mixtape or some sort of music file, or then speak that language. Download this mixtape. Don't say, I don't know, download this file or download whatever or get it free to know. Yeah. Don't say get it. Tell them to download it. You know, if you're offering an e-book or something, mention e-book in your ad. Don't mention file or PDF or whatever it is. Definitely speak the language. Maybe you're dealing with an urban community, and they speak a lot of slang. If that's the case, then that's okay to use that type of verbiage in your ad. Make sure you stay consistent with your product offering and who you're targeting. Go ahead and use y'all if you're targeting Texas. Definitely. All right. So, if you can, you have some sort of device around you. What you should do on our behalf or for us, because out of consideration for us, is you should tweet. And what should they tweet? You should tweet this. This is right behind us. Hashtag SEO Podcast. This is number 227. Be sure to tag us in it at best SEO Podcast

and at eWebStyle. That way we can follow you back and do all of our social stuff. All right. So, if you enjoy our podcast, and we know you do, we are the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes because of you, if you do enjoy our podcast and you haven't done us just a small, little, teeny, weensy, tiny favor, what you should do is you should go on to, first, one option is go on to G Plus Local page. Yeah. Three ways to get into our G Plus Local page. Four. Excuse me. They're all very easy. e-webstyle.com slash Google Plus. Or slash Google Plus. Or slash G Plus. Or slash G Plus. All of those will take you to our G Plus Local page. Please, if you're there, write us a review and write it for five stars. While you're writing that five star review, don't forget to plus one us and put us in your circle. Excellent. Next thing that you could do, it only has three simple steps. Go on to iTunes, create an account, write a review, and also make that review five stars. Finally, on Facebook. You can go to Facebook.com slash eWebStyle. And while you're there, there is a review area. Click a review. Add a review. Also make that one five stars. My voice is going to go out eventually. And please, don't forget, we are your friendly, local, neighborhood, top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is. Don't be a deuce. We have a, I'm going to get through all these commercials really quickly here. We have a referral program. You send an SEO customer to us. They pay bill. We pay you. Simple. Get onto our website. Get a free website analysis. Our website is e-webstyle.com. And on any page you go onto there, I don't know why I'm tossing that down. We need to pick it up in a second. I was going to ask you that. Like, okay. You just feel like dipping out of screen to pick that up, honey. Go get your arm.

The other thing that you can do, if you want to haunt us, stalk us, I don't know, console us. You could do that there. Console. Yeah. We needed some consoling today. Comcast left us feeling down and out. Like, no internet, and we're an internet marketing company, we should now. That's why you're getting a podcast at 6 p.m. Central Time. Yeah. Because we didn't have internet from 8 a.m. through, what was it, 3 o'clock? Too long. Yeah. Too long. It was way too long. All right. So, I was saying, oh, if you want to stalk us, facebook.com slash e-webstyle, twitter.com slash e-webstyle, youtube.com slash e-webstyle, and you can send us an email, podcast at e-webstyle.com. All right. Quick and simple little, let's do a review. This is good. Punch in the face to David Lewis. He's with, yeah, he's with, yeah, I just, I don't know why his name isn't in here. That sucks. The thingamajiggy. I'll remember it. And let's switch to news and then I'll remember that. He's the guy from that thing. He's the guy. He's not as good as the one. Yeah, I just put my pictures on the wall and it's so much easier. Oh, man. Oh, man. That's not how it works. All right. So, anyway, David Lewis's review is punch in the face to e-web, keep kicking shins and delivering the meat. I like that. That's awesome. He is with an AC. Keep kicking shins and delivering the meat. All right. Yep, he's with an AC company here in Houston and we've had some good conversation. He's doing some good stuff already. So, we're actually going to bring him in and meet with him in about two weeks. And I'm trying to remember the name of his website. But anyway, maybe we'll remember it and get to it. A little bit of news. China is testing drones where the drones actually spit out stuff that collect pollutants and then have the pollutants fall out of the sky. I just don't know if I want to be out of pollutants.

Yeah. Like, yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah. Like air poop. Isn't that basically air poop? Smog bomb. Yeah, smog bomb. Yeah, I don't know. There's a Snowden phone. I don't know if you've read about that. So, it's based on the Galaxy S2. And what it does is it does a lot more encryption and can't use it and the NSA can't, quote unquote, follow you. And finally, there's a new way to interact with people. Teenagers are using it. College kids are using it. It's more intended for college kids and there's a little bit of hoopla about it. It's called Yik Yak. It's a pretty cool concept where it's kind of like a local Twitter. So, based on your GPS, it knows who's around you. And because this would actually be really good for, you know, the situations where there have been shootings on campuses or whatever. If everybody's tied into that, that could be really interesting. Anyway, so based on your GPS and if you have the app, then you can interact with each other all in one group. And it'll let you do up to 500 people. So, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, as long as it's used, I probably will check it out. Okay. Only because I'm social like that. I'm not sure how often I'll use it. I may not want everybody to know I'm in here. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, I don't know. Just don't. I don't know. I mean, because I probably not. Right. I check in everywhere I go. So, I guess that's going to do it. They know it anyway. Yeah. So, we'll see. May not want any random people walking up to me. Yeah. So, that's the thing, right? Because then it's random people who know who you are and where you're at. Did we have any algo cat? No algo cat. No algo cat. All right. Well, that has been the meat of our podcast. Let's get, excuse me, the potatoes of our podcast. This is, you

know, you take the internet away from me and I'm suffering. Let's get to the meat. Yeah, definitely. So, I wanted to talk social media today. And I got a pretty good article from Search Engine Journal posted by Albert Castile, punching the face to him. 10 mistakes we've all made on social media and how to fix them. So, great title. Made me click on it. So, what we'll do here is we'll let you know if we've ever made this mistake before, right? Because it says that we've all made it. So, we're going to see if we've made this mistake before and hopefully the answer is at least for two of them that we haven't. We probably made them all, you know. Yeah, probably. But we'll see. But anyway, it's a great article. I wanted to present it to you guys because I thought it was informative. So, let's dive in. Number one, he says, treating all social media platforms the same. I mean, that's a huge mistake. And I see people do it over and over and over again. Matter of fact, I was talking to, we had a client come in, a potential client come in and we were sharing with her what we would do in regards to marketing her social. And so, first question she asked was, how can I get these same posts on LinkedIn? And I was like, well, you don't really want to use LinkedIn like you use Twitter. And so, let's take that a step further. You don't want to use LinkedIn like you use Twitter. You don't want to use Twitter like you use Facebook. Shouldn't use Facebook like you use Google Plus and so on because they're all different platforms. They all have a different type of people who use them and they all have, you know, various features that the others don't have. Twitter, got to keep it short and simple, right to the point. Excuse me. Matter of fact, yeah, keep it short and simple, right to the point. If it's Facebook, you know, that

Facebook user is likely a grandma or somebody a little bit older, Gen X maybe. But the object is to probably look at photos and read some contents and share a lot of videos is what's really happening on Facebook a lot more now. Twitter, you don't have space for all that. You have content limits and character limits. And so, you have to, you know, abide by the rules. Keep it under 140 characters, right? Google Plus, a lot more techies right now that haven't really been widely adopted. And so, that's the place where you want to go into detail and provide all sorts of little information, links, videos, and everything else. That's kind of where you want to do that at. So, that was number one. Now, I will say, one thing he didn't talk about here, which I will bring up, is Instagram. Huge social network right now, growing. If you're trying to use social media and really find that Gen Y, that 18 to 30, you know, type of demographic, find them on Instagram. And now, Instagram is also probably the one social network that you can sync with Twitter and Facebook and whatever you post on. Either one of them will be fine on Instagram. Because of pictures. It's images. Exactly. In fact, one of the articles that I thought about, pieces of news that I thought about putting in was Instagram just inked a first deal with a major marketing firm. Marketing firm has like 5,000 clients and spent, I think it was $100 million in Instagram advertising. That's recent. So, maybe even within a month or something. Instagram is great for advertising. Great for marketing. Especially if you're like in an entertainment industry and you're used to, you need those little 15-second shout-outs or 15-second quick promos or, you know, flyers or whatever it is, product images. Like, that's where you go. Now, what Instagram should do is make it easy to repost what other people have already posted. Right now, I use a repost app, which kind of takes everything that

I've liked and then it'll redo it, which is kind of cool because it gives you an option to save that image to your own device. Right, right. But, come on, Instagram. Like, incorporate that. You shouldn't have to use another app to use your platform. Definitely. So, I would work that. Number two, posting at inappropriate times. This is key. A writer goes on to say, do you think someone in California will respond to a tweet that a New Yorker sent out at 8 a.m.? Most likely not. No. I like this one here. Facebook engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. Twitter weekdays have a 14% more engagement than weekends. Interesting. Yeah. With 5 p.m. Having the highest amount of retweets. So, you take that sort of knowledge and you use that effectively while you're posting. Yeah. Right? No need to post all your stuff early in the morning. First thing you do, get to your office and do all your posts because nobody's going to see those because they probably haven't got the work yet or whatever it is. So, I'll say this, and I think I'll get back to this a little later, but I'm going to say it now. I think it's okay to post the same post, especially on Twitter, multiple times a day. Yeah. Right. Especially if you're somebody like me who has, you know, I follow 2,500 people. And so, when I'm using TweetDeck, it's constantly scrolling. And so, if you only post it once, I'll likely miss it. Right. So, it's okay to post it more than once, maybe at 8, then again at noon, then try it again at 4. You know, maybe one of those three times, I'm subject to catch it. Right. Number three, placing quantity over quality. Man, we haven't really made this because we believe that, you know, having followers and people who actually engage with you is more important than having a ton of them. Right. Access to my children is all the numbers game to them. Follow me and I'll follow

you back. I don't care who you are type attitude. Right. I'm trying to change them to get them away from that. But, and that's what I'm noticing with most younger people. You know, they're focused on having tons and tons of followers and tons and tons of likes and tons and tons of friends. People who won't share your content, who aren't loyal to your product or your brand, don't really care about you. Don't, that's not an effective use of social media. Right. Instead, target people who will engage, who do like your product, who will maybe retweet you, who will share your article or share your link. Matter of fact, in regards to the content, because this goes into not just the numbers, but also to what you're posting. And how often. And how often you're posting. Exactly. You know, you don't want to post, you know, several links to blog posts that kind of suck. Right. You want to take some time, put together a quality post, put together a quality Facebook post and a Twitter tweet and post it out. And with the whole objective of getting some sort of engagement, I call it the old versus end. Like you want something that'll go, oh, or you don't want anything that'll, eh. Yeah. And then that's almost an, eh. Exactly. So, so old versus end. Think about that when you're creating posts and think about that when you're, when you're generating followers. Number four, not taking advantage of a bio. This is huge. Cause I see it so many times. Frankly, if you don't have a bio, I won't follow you back. Appreciate your follow. Yeah. But I won't follow you back cause I don't know what you do. I don't know who you are. I don't know where you're located. I don't know how me following you helps me. And the only way you can educate me on that is if you have a bio, if you have a bio, then I'm subject to go and scan through your most recent tweets and then

see if I want to, you know, follow you or not. So add a bio. Add a bio. Now I will say the bio is probably one of those things you can't keep consistent across the board. Yeah. Your Twitter bio is okay to have that as, you know, have that in your Facebook about page. It's okay to have that as your personal description on LinkedIn. That's fine. Number five, post, not posting enough versus posting too much. That kind of goes to what I was saying earlier. If I, if you, a good way to figure out how much you need to post is check the quality of followers that your followers have. So for example, when somebody follows you on Twitter, check them out first and you realize, oh, they follow a lot of people. And if you start realizing that most of your followers follow a lot of people, then it's probably okay for you to post a lot of times because they, you have more opportunity to get your post in front of them. However, if your followers are kind of don't follow a lot of people, but they do a lot of retweeting. They do a lot of sharing. Then they probably don't follow a lot of people for a reason. That's so they can absorb content that they're interested in. And if that's the case, then you want to strategically post and make sure that it's in a position where they can get it and they can share it. Number six, I'm using automated messages. Um, I don't really like them, um, but I understand them and sometimes they're okay. What I hate is the ones where you get the automatic douchey message that's so spammy. And it's like, you know, thank you for following me. I'm the greatest person ever. And, uh, and, and, and whatever, boo, that'll probably get you unfollowed real quick because that's kind of a sign of the kind of tweet you'll probably be sending out. Right. That's the sign of the kind of content you'll put out.

But then again, some automated messages are okay. So let's say you're a brand, right? You'll say you're selling a product and you're, and you're Twitter and you're marketing on social. Then maybe your auto, um, your auto, um, uh, automated messages. Um, thank you for following us. Click here to download this coupon or click here for maybe an artist, right? You make music. Thanks for the follow. Click here to download my latest mixtape for free or, and it has a bonus song. I'm going to for you, uh, because you follow me or something like that. You know, uh, it works great for products and artists and things like that. But if you provide a service and, and, and maybe you're some expert at something or whatever, then, uh, that's kind of cool. Then, uh, then, then maybe following isn't really the best thing you should be doing. I mean, auto, uh, automatic messages. Number seven, um, not proof, not proofreading. This is key. It's okay to use shorthand, especially on Twitter, right? Because you only have 140 characters. And so sometimes you may have to abbreviate in order to get your message across, but just had blatant misspellings and things like that. Um, that's not really what you want to do. That's, that's not, it has a harmful effect and it could be detrimental to your branding, to the reputation. And I'm thinking of a company who did something they did the, over the Superbowl. They, um, oh yeah, some big company. What did they do? I can't think of right now, but, um, yeah, it was bad. And they had to come back in and try to do some PR cleanup and, and fix it. And, and everybody, it was like, eh. Well, even though. Oh, in a bad way. And then, eh, as the response. Yeah, it was more like, ooh. So, so yeah, proofread your stuff. But like I said, it's okay to use shorthand, especially in situations where shorthand is necessary. Uh, just again, back to that first one, make sure you,

your audience or like our tip was, make sure your audience understands. Yeah. Like, for example, I can use crazy shorthand when I'm tweeting my kids directly and things like that. Cause they understand it. Yeah. But if I was to, you know, uh, DM or, or send a, a text to my wife using some of the same lingo, I've been using with the kids, she's going to be like, eh, eh, eh, exactly. And so I'll get a phone call. No follow. Exactly. Exactly. So, so proofread your stuff. Um, number eight, um, using social media only as a megaphone. Yeah. Social media is a two way street. Um, I totally agree. Yeah. Right. If you're on there and all you're doing is blasting out promo and blasting out, um, how awesome you are and blasting out why you're the greatest, but you're not reciprocating that love. You're not, uh, retweeting people who, who may also be awesome. Maybe people who, who enjoy your product. Um, you're not following them back. That's what I can't stand. People who have, you know, a hundred thousand followers and they follow like 12 people. Yeah. Yeah. Like, come on, dude. Really? Remember we talked about when Kanye West, like he has, he's like that. I think he has like one follow, he follows one person or something or none. And then he followed one random dude and everybody was trying to, he was like, I don't, like, I don't care. It was hilarious. And when you're Kanye West, you can probably get away with that. Yeah. Because, yeah. You're famous. Well, not just that. I know you don't care. Yeah. Right. You know what I'm saying? And so, but, but, but, you know, for us. He's putting his life on the line every day, making music. But, uh, but if you're, if you're in business, you're small business and you're trying to use social media to, to, to get more business, then you must follow people who follow you. You must like other businesses. It's okay to like your competitor. You

know, you won't get, well, I ain't gonna say you won't get fired for it. Right. Because remember the, uh, the lady liked her, anyway. Yeah. So, um, it's okay to do that. It's okay to retweet people. It's okay to, to share links on Facebook that somebody else has posted as a business. That's okay. Cause people see that, they recognize that, and they remember that. Number nine, not properly using the ad symbol or hashtags and images. Um, I like the tricky pointed out here. I was already doing this, um, but I was using it with the word the, or just small words. So for example, on Twitter, if you're, if you're sending a reply at somebody, and so you started off with that reply at them, then only you and them are the only people who will see that, even though you may want it to be public. So the little trick is put a period in front of it. Right. And then go at, and then that way everybody on their timeline and your timeline can see it. Oh, okay. That's pretty cool. Um, he says, uh, well, I wrote this. If you have, um, hashtags that you use frequently, this is, this is, this is going to be our tip. All right. If you have hashtags that you use frequently on like Facebook and Twitter and G plus and Instagram, then create content on your website optimized for that same hashtag. Because when people click those hashtags, especially in Google, then web content shows up. And if you're optimized for that hashtag that you're promoting so much, you want your site to come up. Last thing you want is maybe some random people who also use a similar hashtag or use that hashtag as well. Or your competition. Exactly. To show up for something that you've been marketing, that you've been putting, you know, time and effort into. So, so make sure you have pages on your site dedicated to specific hashtags. Makes sense, don't it? Yep. Uh, last but not least, number 10,

he says, um, saying too much. Yeah. Sometimes you can say too much. Um, kind of like the newsletter concept. When we send out newsletters, we tend to give you snippets with links that bring you back to the blog. That way you can read everything you want to read. And frankly, you're in a place where you can convert now because you're on our site. And so treat social the same way. You know, nobody wants to log on Facebook and read one piece, right? Yep. Just give a summary. And then a link. Well, there is that one, one guy. Well, who, yeah. You know, that's the same person, though, you know, who put it on their wall. Yeah. And unfriended the person standing next to him. Yeah. So, so don't do that, right? And especially with Twitter, I'll give you this tip as well. It's 140 characters. Um, he says, um, stick to tweets that are under 100. And I totally agree. They're easy to read. But more importantly, if somebody retweets it, you leave them room to add a quote, to add their two cents. Thanks. To add whatever they want to say. Wrong. Right. Awesome. Exactly. To your tweet. And so, so give them that space. If you maximize your character limit, then I may not even retweet it because I can't say what I want to say. Yeah, the other day I retweeted and I was like, okay, what do I have to, what do I have to delete in order to add my message to this? And now you get to changing their original tweet. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, so, so don't do that. So, uh, that was, uh, the top 10 things, top 10 mistakes we all made on social media and how to fix them. Punch in the face to you, Albert. Great article. Great job. Hey, I want to give a punch in the face to Ben Chapman who's actually watching right now with his twins and he sent us a twit pic of us on his video camera

while his twins are painting. Uh, Ben, uh, punch in the face, that's... Punch in the face to your setup because I have my TV mounted over the fireplace as well. Yeah. So that's just kind of cool. Cool. Punch in the face. That's awesome. Uh, thank you for tuning in. Any what, um, or what, um, well, I kind of got some, some, oh, okay. We'll go with, oh, oh, yeah. So this one goes out to Yahoo, right? So they've been making some changes. Oh, wait. So it's, uh... Yeah, I think this is a good move. Wow. I think this is a good move for them. Um, I'm not sure if it's going to end up being a good move, but it seems like a good move. So, you know, they made a change where you now, you have to log into Yahoo using your Yahoo account. They disabled the option to log in using Facebook. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. I totally agree with that. In order to get more people to use Yahoo, you have to make them use your platform. Yeah. And so, um, kudos for that. I think that's a positive move. Uh, it may not pan out because you're, you were, you know, going downhill, um, and you just technically removed access. Yeah. Of course, a whole group of people. But I think, um, if you stay, uh, with the ship, I think that could be a positive move. Oh, all right. Good, good job, Marissa. Um, all right. This has been podcast number 227. That's what you see right behind us. This is the best SEO podcast on iTunes. On the whole known universe planet galaxy. Follow us on Twitter at best SEO podcast. Uh, and we are the number one podcast because of all y'all. Thank you guys for tuning in. Uh, anyone watching, Ben, uh, thank you for turning, watching. And until the next podcast, my name is Chris Perez. Charles Lewis. Bye bye for now. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye bye. Bye bye bye. Bye bye bye. Bye bye bye.