How Social Media Managers Can Avoid Hearing The F-Word... Fail! | Social Media

I started working in the social media field circa 2011 and I've seen changes in user experience, trends, and yes, even fails throughout my career. It's a tough pill to swallow knowing that your mistakes are put on display for your entire audience to witness and then anyone they decide to share it with will see your error at the click of a button. Contrary to popular belief, social media managers are human (not robots), and we're going to make mistakes. Heck sometimes we don't even make the mistakes! It could be a glitch in our scheduling software, social app or platform being down, and on occasion we even are given the wrong copy, link or creative to post from other teams unbeknownst to us.

So what are the most epic fails social media managers encounter? More importantly, how can you avoid them for your brand?

Check out five of the top fails and how to avoid them below:

5. Automation Gone Wrong:

If you ever heard one of my presentations or podcast features, I always say one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make with social media is scheduling content and not checking on it. You wouldn't put a turkey in the oven, set a time and not check on it ever again. The same can be said for social media. Scheduling platforms are not infallible, shit happens! You could schedule a post to go out and their software could be down or have a glitch. If everything goes out as planned, you might have slotted the wrong creative with the caption, dropped in the wrong link, etc. Whatever it may be, keep in mind it's important to check in on your social posts often and make sure everything is going out as planned.

4. Unbalanced Content:

They say life is all about balance and social media works the same way. When posting to your brand's social media channels you want to ensure you have a balance of quality content. Creating a social media content calendar can help with this. Take a look at the week, month or quarter ahead and schedule out a variety of content including professional photography, organic user-generated content, videos, stories, boomerangs, gifs, cinemagraphs, graphics, carousels, etc. Be sure to balance your text-to-creative as well, you don't want to be too text heavy on any one post, especially if the creative is a text graphic or tutorial video with a lot of copy already.

3. Sloppiness:

If there's one thing that will make you look like a noob it is social media sloppiness. As mentioned above, social media managers are human, we are bound to have a typo here and there, but if it's a consistent issue, you're not only making yourself look bad, but you're making your brand look bad. Be sure to proof read copy for your caption and even copy on creative. I have found plenty of typos on creative given to me to post, whether it be misspelling a speaker's name or the wrong date, you want to double check what you are posting is accurate.

2. Being Oblivious To Current Events & News:

Let me share a little story about this one... Back when I first started in social media, I worked with a relatively well known celebrity and before boarding a flight this celebrity sent out a Tweet exclaiming their enthusiasm for In-N-Out burgers and how much they couldn't wait to have one when they landed... unfortunately, moments later news of the Sandy Hook shooting broke and the celebrity had no idea. So his Tweet hung there on social media for hours! When they landed, they were flooded with Tweets about insensitivity during this tragic event. Now of course, this wasn't entirely this celeb's fault, but the lesson here is to keep an ear to what's happening in the news. Of course this doesn't always have to mean being mindful of tragedy, but also jumping on positive trends that are set in pop culture like the ice bucket challenge or planking.

1. Not Taking Social Media Seriously:

And the number one fail I see working in social media is when people don't take it seriously. This applies to both the team the social media manager is working with and themselves. If you don't take your job seriously, no one will - including your audience and customers. Your social media presence is a reflection of you and your brand and in 2020 it's becoming your company's calling card. Keep you brand updated, relevant, and cohesive on social media. This includes creative, voice, tone, and overall feel.