oversharing-on-social-media

Oversharing on Social Media? Business vs. Personal

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Are you oversharing on social media sites for your business?

For years parents have been warning their kids about oversharing and posting certain things on social media.  Once it’s out there it is out there! The same should be taken into consideration when posting for your business.  We have seen politicians oversharing and caught with their pants down on social media.  What did that do to benefit their political career?  You don’t want that same thing for your business, right?  While your posts may not go viral it doesn’t mean they could cost you lost sales and/or money.

Some rules of thumb to follow or keep in mind when posting for your business.  The first thing we would advise to any business is to have separate accounts for personal use and your business.  Your family and friends love the pictures of your kids you share but it doesn’t mean your customers or prospects do.

     1.  Don’t say anything negative

Don’t say anything negative about current or former employees.  Don’t talk about how drunk or high you got.  Don’t say anything bad about a competitor.  You may share this information with your best friend but why share it on social media at all, especially on your business site?  Where is that going to get you?  How does that benefit your business?  Again, oversharing.

     2.  Politics

This is a huge one, especially in a year of a controversial presidential election.  Saturday Night Live might make fun of candidates but why engage in that behavior on a social media site for your business?  I will ask the question again.  How does that benefit your business?  More than likely, you wouldn’t want someone else to push their personal beliefs, religious or political opinions on you.  Why do it to others?

     3.  Take a moment

 It may be easy to post on social media but that doesn’t mean you should post personal details on your business page.  What would you think about a business site you went to and they had personal details posted?  Especially personal points of view that you disagree with?

     4.  Would you put it in your store window?

If you had a storefront would you post the embarrassing pictures of your kids or of the ladies night out in the front window of your store.  Probably not.  Take that into consideration before oversharing a questionable photo or post.

     5.  Keep it relevant 

Your customers are already distracted enough with so much information coming their way.  When they take time out of their busy day to visit your page or read a post you only have a few seconds to capture their attention.  Why waste that time on something that is not relevant to your products, services or business?  

In a Microsoft study referenced in the Huffington Post, “The average human attention span has declined from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to 8 seconds now.” “This is shorter than the attention span of a goldfish which is 9 seconds.”  Why waste even a second with a message that is not on point?

If there is doubt about a post, there is no doubt.  One sure way to avoid doing this is to have someone else manage the social media for your business.  A professional social media manager will take into consideration every post made and make it as relevant to your business as possible.  www.engagedsmm.com can help you with your social media management and take out the risk of oversharing on social media.

 

 

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