7 Deadly Social Sins

Earlier last week, I did a Periscope broadcast about the Seven Deadly Social Sins. Things that people are doing online and on social media, that are just bad for business.

In today's post, I wanted to recap some of those things in a more succinct and well thought out manner, so that you could enjoy them even if you missed the live broadcast.

I just wanna say before starting that, this is all in good fun, and that even if you've made these mistakes, it's okay. Going forward we just won't make them any more. Every one has done at least one or more of these.

I, myself have done every single one on this list before, and had to learn over time that some of these things are just bad for business.

1. The Group Carpet Bomb

If you're the group carpet bomber, you're catching people's attention and not in a good way. A lot of people want to create exposure in Facebook groups, which is a good strategy.

However, what is not a good strategy is writing one post and sharing it across 7 or 8 different groups.

When you write one post and share it up in a ton of groups, it actually creates a notification that you've shared the same thing in multiple groups for everyone that follows you. To all your followers, it makes it look self-serving.

Listen, I understand we are all in business and obviously you're posting in groups to get exposure, I've done this myself.

However, when you post the exact same thing in a bunch of different groups, it creates the appearance that you only care about getting the eyes on your content, not that you care about the community.

Put community first and allow the visibility to come second. You'll find that when you lead with community and visibility comes second, you'll ultimately create more visibility in the long run.

If you really want to be seen in multiple groups, write different content that's specific to each group and show that you pay attention to and care about the community.  Do the work, get the results.

2. Welcome To My Group - I'm Zach!

A lot of people have taken to creating communities on Facebook via groups. While groups are a great way to build your community, your brand and your customer base very rapidly, they are also a source of our second deadly sin.

A lot of people want to grow their group fast, and they take to adding people they think might be a good fit. However, just because you think someone's a good fit for your group, doesn't mean you should add them without their permission.

Being added to groups is one of, if not the most annoying things that you can do to someone on Facebook. You should never add someone to your group without their permission. Not only does it come across as aggressive, but it also creates a slew of new notifications for them that they didn't sign up for.

If you wanna add someone to your group, shoot them a message first and ask them if they're interested in joining. Additionally, you should take steps to promote your group and encourage people to join of their own choice.

While this will make people like you more, it will also result in a more highly engaged group.

That is how I built the engagement of my highly active Facebook Community:

3. Give Me All 'Yo Money

One of the major mistakes people make on Facebook is that, they think now that they have a following they can simply post the things they have for sale, time and time again.

Listen, I understand that you wanna sell your products, I wanna sell my products too. However, if every post or dang near every post you put up, is actually a link to your sales page or something I can buy from you, you are hurting yourself.

Social media is just that, social.

If it was all about getting paid it would be called selling media. We wanna get social with people, get them to know who we are as a person and a brand, and allow them to connect with us for the things that we offer for free, think your lead magnets, opt-ins etc.

Give people your free content and allow them to graduate into your paid content. Facebook should lead to free, as should most social media platforms.

A direct sale very rarely happens, and when it does, it's just somebody who already knows who you are.

4. I Like You A LOT (But Not Enough to Engage For Real)

This one happens a lot on Instagram, sometimes it happens on Facebook and every once in a while it happens on Periscope.

Sometimes people are just looking to get their follower count up, and what they do is they go through and they like a million photos, drop a follow for follow, and straight up ask for hearts.

I'm not talking about liking photos, leaving real comments with people who are your ideal customers. I understand a good Instagram strategy.

What I am talking about is someone who goes through my entire profile, likes all of my photos in seconds, leaves lame comments like "Awesome" "Wow" "That's cool" and doesn't even care about who I am.

If you're only leaving comments because you want to build the number and not an engaged following, you're doing it wrong.

You see, a large following doesn't pay the bills, a large bank account does.

Engage with authenticity and the right people will follow you if it's a good fit all around.

Don't go through liking a million Instagram photos, because you want a bunch of follows. 

5. Sincerely "Bob's Business Page"

This is running rampant on Facebook and is a major problem. Stop signing your Facebook post with your business page as a tag. I know what you are trying to do, you want more visibility. What it actually does is it looks really, overly self promotional.

Again, it's social media not selling media. We don't wanna constantly be promoting ourselves in an incredibly blatant, obvious, aggressive way.

When you sign to your Facebook post with a tag to your business page, it puts out the impression, the only reason you posted in the first place was to get people to like your business page.

It comes back to what we talked about earlier, if you want visibility, get visibility for yourself and allow the qualified people to find out what your page is.

The best way you can do this is to link your page to your profile by mentioning that you worked at your page.

This allows those who care about the content that you share to click to your profile, click to your page and if you still jive with them they'll still end up liking your page.

I promise you this works!

Time and time again when I'm active in groups, I ultimately end up growing my page following, even though I never link back to my page.

I simply allow my profile to speak volumes about who I am as a person.

If someone clicks with me, they'll explore my business page, and if that they love my message and brand they'll like, comment and possibly even join my email list.

6. I Accidentally Friended a Billboard

All right, this needs to be said. Your personal page really shouldn't be 100% business. I get it, I share business content on my personal page because I'm friends with a lot of business people.

It's okay to share business content from time to time. 

(Actually, it's against the rules and Facebook TOS technically, but I get it - it happens, let's just be real here.)

However, I friended a person, not a billboard. I get flustered when I friend someone and find that their that last 30 posts are links to their latest freebie, their latest webinar, their latest sale or their latest blog post.

I wanna know who you are as a person on your profile. It's okay to share personal things about your life.

You don't have to be overly intimate or share things that you don't want. I wanna see a selfie of you with your dogs, or your family, or what you had for lunch from time to time.

Don't treat your personal profile as another exclusive avenue to generate business. Can it generate any more business?

Sure. If that's all it is, then you are not actually making friends on Facebook, you're making customers.

Again, that's a strategy best cut for our business page, or your email list.

Quick recap, yes, you can share business related content on your personal page.

No, your personal page should not be 100% business 100% of the time.

7. Yes, I CAN See You...

For our final deadly sin, let's talk about the Facebook post that goes a little something like this:

"Facebook is hiding all of my posts, please like and comment if you can see this."

Here's the thing, I understand why people do this. In fact it used to work really, really well. If you could get people highly engaged on a status that you posted on Facebook, it would result in the next thing you posted getting more engagement than usual.

What a lot of people did is, they would post this or a similar status update, it would temporarily boost their affinity on Facebook and it would mean that the next few things they posted would actually get more action.

Facebook wised up to this little trick and it doesn't actually work anymore.

Additionally, it actually creates a situation where you look, but you are not as authoritative as you could be.

What ultimately ends up happening is, you have a post where you say "No one will talk to me" and then you get tons of people talking to you and it ends up being very confusing to your ideal clients.

Additionally, what it says is, you feel like you're struggling to be heard, and as an expert in any field, people want to know that you now what you are doing.

It hurts your credibility when you look "unheard".

Whether you teach social media or not, you want people to think you have a understanding of your social platforms.

Trust me, I understand why you are doing this, but it really doesn't work.

Let this one go. Promise?

Let's End Social Sinning Today...

Those are the major things that I see people doing on Facebook and social media, that we really need to cut out.

As a community of business owners we can do better for ourselves and our ideal clients. Let's stop committing these social sins today.

Like I said at the beginning of the post, if you are doing or have done one of these things, no judgement.

I swear I have done every single one of the things on this list. I have plastered all my sales on my personal page.

I've carpet bombed groups like it's my job, I've asked people to buy stuff from me over and over again and yes I've even done the dreaded "can you see this post" on Facebook.

We all make mistakes.

This post is meant to be a lighthearted and fun reminder about the things that we might not even realize we're doing wrong, but ultimately create a bad image to our followers.

If you got a ton of value off this post, I'd love to know in the comments below, what is a deadly sin of social media that I might have missed? What do people do that drives you nuts?