Quality vs. Quantity: Social Media Spam

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You can’t shove your message down people throats.  Now that most businesses are finally catching on that they need to be using social media for their businesses, we feel like it’s necessary to tell people that just like email, you can abuse the connection.    Online tendencies are shifting and people are looking for personal content and want to feel like a person is on the other end of the computer.  In an opt-in era, it’s far too easy for people to click a button and unsubscribe or just delete your emails and messages if the volume gets too high or the messages aren’t relevant.  If you as a business owner or an agency are managing  emails, mobile marketing and social media, you should follow some guidelines to keep your clients interest:

Facebook:

• If you have a personal profile instead of a fan page (not a good sign) and you send out a message everyday and in some cases multiple messages in the same day to a facebook inbox, you’re spamming and even if people don’t “defriend” you, they will soon stop reading your messages.
• Plan from the beginning to either go with a  fan page or a personal page.  If you have a personal page for your business, convert it.  If you do both and you send messages from both, you’re venturing in SPAMland.
• Check out your analytics (Insights) if you have a fan page and see when people are looking at your page the most and what kind of content gets the most traffic.  Download Facebook Insights Guide

Twitter:

• If you have your messages clearly set up on a timed or scheduled tweet, that’s fine…but if you have 8 messages in a row every hour on the hour…SPAM! At least space them out.
• If you tweet more than every 5 minutes, chances are likely that your messages are going to seem less and less important
• Make sure your tweets are up to date and that the links work.  There’s nothing more annoying when the link is broken.

Email:

• If I opted in for one thing and you are sending me messages about other things without me opting in…SPAM
• If you send more than 3 messages in a week, chances are only one is going to get read
• Try to send 1-2 emails per week maximum
• If you have an agency managing your emails or you’re paying somebody to send out marketing emails, ask them to show you their open rate.  If it’s less than 40%, they have probably spammed people in the past and your emails probably aren’t going to be read either.  If they don’t know, then run!

Text

• Don’t send more than one message per week!  People REALLY don’t want to get a ton of messages from you on their phones.
• Make your messages extremely important.  Don’t just send something to be sending something.  Have a purpose and a call to action.
• If you are using text messaging for coupons, make sure your coupons are good ones.

There is a fine line between spamming and staying relevant.  With people’s communication habits changing so rapidly it’s hard to keep up, but just think about how annoying it is when somebody spams you and how it makes you feel.  Even in the digital world, the Golden Rule works.

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