7 Things You Need To Stop Doing on Social Media
We’re spilling the tea and breaking down the facts in this blog.
Here’s the tea on all these outdated social media practices, and tips on what to do instead. Some of these are obvious and known to some, but some of these are not known yet, and we hear a lot of “social media experts” preach some this outdated advice to their audience! We’re here to clear things up, so keep reading to keep up to date.
FOLLOW FOR FOLLOW GROWTH METHOD
You should know this one by now! The ‘follow for follow’ growth method is when people agree to follow each other, just for the sake of that extra follower. Another thing people will do, is ‘follow unfollow’ method, in which people will follow you, see if you will follow them back and then unfollow you if you don’t! These are all tactics that call for an un-engaged following, which let us remind you, is not what you want! You want a community of people, an engaged audience, who enjoy your content and engage with it.
Too often, we get caught up in the vanity metrics, meaning we pay too much attention to how many followers we have, the number, versus the health of your account. You have to look at your engagement rate - how many of your followers are engaging with your content? That is what shows the overall health of your account and is a great sign of a community. Take a look at your engagement in your insights as well as your content interactions. See how many of your followers are engaging with your content and keep an eye on it on a weekly basis. Lastly, remember, growing a community doesn’t happen overnight.
ENGAGEMENT PODS
This is very similar to the ‘follow for follow’ or ‘follow unfollow’ growth tactic. Engagement pods are when people create groups and whenever a group member shares a post, all members like, comment and/or share the post. Whether the group contains 20 people or 1,000 people, it can be very damaging to your account, because similarly to the ‘follow for follow’ method, the people engaging with your content are not engaging with it because they enjoy it, rather, they are engaging with it in order to receive engagement back to their account! This is not organic and never results in an organic following, in organic engagement, in conversion or in sales.
Participating in engagement pods can also cause a social media platform to flag your account when spam-like behaviours (mass-liking, mass-following and mass-DM'ing etc…) which actually lowers your chances of organic exposure, i.e. reach, and leads to your account being ‘shadow-banned’. Oftentimes, engagement pods tend to fade out with time, and when this happens, there will be a massive drop in your engagement.
Instead, organic growth & engagement is what you want to strive for, which comes with a community and again, growing a community does not happen overnight. You priority needs to be sharing content of value, implementing a content strategy that converts, making sales and reaching your target audience - not just anyone and everyone. Our top tip is to implement a strategy and organic, healthy growth tactics, which you can read more on here.
30 HASHTAGS on instagram
Unpopular opinion, we know. A couple of months ago, we would’ve recommended for you to use 30 hashtags and we were still doing so with all of our clients; however, in the social media world, you have to learn to adapt and you have to adapt fast & quickly if needed. We still see a lot of people preaching to use 30 hashtags, so let’s explain why this is wrong.
Here’s what Later has to say about the hashtag dispute; “Instagram is introducing more ‘suggested’ content feeds – like the Instagram Reels tab, for example. But in order to provide suggested content that truly is a ‘good match,’ Instagram needs to be able to accurately categorize it. The theory? Fewer hashtags = more reliable self categorization.”
Since 75% of our content on Instagram should be Reels, and the Reels feed is all suggested content, then this tells you that you should be using LESS hashtags, in order for Instagram to properly categorize your posts and show them to your target audience. TikTok’s consensus is to use 3-8 hashtags, and since TikTok is recommending this, don’t you think Instagram will follow? We all know who is leading in the social media world, and if you don’t - read more here.
Instagram gets confused with 30 hashtags, because chances are, those 30 hashtags are not all specific to the piece of content you are sharing. The less & more specific, the better Instagram will be able to categorize and share it to your target audience. Our top tip with hashtags is to include post-specific hashtags and niche-specific hashtags. For example, if you are an interior designer, sharing a bathroom you’ve designed, the hashtags would be: #bathroominspiration #modernbathroom #bathroomrenovationideas #interiordesign #interiordesignersinnewyork
It’s less work for you too… I know all of you that are still set on using 30 hashtags are tempted right now! 😉 Read a more in-depth run-down on hashtags in our previous blog here.
TRENDING VIDEOS FOR GROWTH
Again, an unpopular opinion. Trending videos do not help you grow your account, on both TikTok and Instagram. Think about it - a trending audio is simply a sound that a lot of accounts are using. This makes it saturated and not optimal for growth. The sound you use doesn’t matter, it’s the actual content that’s shared. Many of you might say “but we’ve seen so many accounts go viral from using a trending sound!”. That is not down to the sound, but down the these two questions:
Is what you’re saying in the text-overlay of the video entertaining?
Is what you’re saying in the text-overlay of the video relatable to the masses?
In order for a video to go viral, it must be relatable to the masses, meaning, it’s relatable to everyone and anyone. Again, to remind you as a side note, this shouldn’t be your goal, as your goal isn’t to go viral and reach the masses, but to reach your target audience and to build a community that is engaged (we’re drilling this one in). Back to our main point, the reason for the video going viral is not because of the sound used, but because of the two determining factors mentioned above, was the content entertaining and/or relatable?
Trending sounds are a great tool to use to describe or portray a situation, to condense information into 1 sound and to put it across in a bite-sized video, that’s easily digestable to your target audience. We aren’t against them; however, they do not help you grow your account.
Growing your account requires giving value, which doesn’t come from shot bite-sized videos. It comes from nurturing your audience, giving longer explanations to concepts that you teach. Right now, when you scroll your FYP (for you page) on TikTok, 70% of the content suggested by the app are videos longer than 1 minute that involve talking. Our top tip is to incorporate a mix of trending videos and talking videos. Out of 3 videos, you post, 1 of them should be a trending sound. Only use trending sounds when you can relate to them and when they align with your brand values.
POSTING 3X PER DAY on tiktok
With the previous TikTok algorithm, the general consensus was to pump out as much content as possible, and sure, that worked before, but not anymore. The current TikTok algorithm priorities keywords and longer video formats (2 minutes +), as they are competing with YouTube. Right now, it’s always quality > quantity, so you would rather post 3-5x per week, ensuring your video is high quality, rather than pumping out a larger volume of lower quality videos. Here are some of the factors that determine the quality of your video:
good & natural lighting
text cropped correctly so it’s visible on screen
using hooks at the beginning of your video
cutting out the dead pauses during talking videos
using keywords in your video, description, enclosed captions & hashtags
adding enclosed captions to your video and even putting in the extra effort and typing out the important parts that you don’t want your audience to miss
All of these tips are given that you have a strategy in place to make sure you are posting according to a consistent topic, as well as incorporating some kind of blueprint for conversion.
THE SHORTER THE VIDEO THE BETTER
This is not true anymore. TikTok is in competition with YouTube, as you may know if you read these blogs and follow our TikTok, so they are actually aiming for longer videos. And Instagram is in competition with TikTok, so whatever is the consensus on TikTok, Instagram will follow. To get ahead of the wave and rank higher than others, start implementing these things early.
We’ve analyzed over 20 accounts this weekend with a range of followers, from 1,000 followers to 500,000 followers - all of their best performing content in the last month were videos around 1 minute (with exceptions). Our top tip is to incorporate a mix of longer & shorter form videos. Both are important - but it’s not always the shorter the better.
USE OUTSIDE APPS TO ADD FANCY CAPTIONS TO YOUR VIDEO
We are seeing a lot of tutorials and tips that has creators add fancy, enclosed captions in another app for the sake of a video’s aesthetic; however, this doesn’t contribute to your keywords as the platform (IG and/or TikTok won’t register what is written)! When you use in-app native text and in-app captions, it contributes to the keywords, which then helps you rank in the search engine. This is more so the case on TikTok, rather than IG. Therefore, instead of wasting your storage space and time on outside apps, use TikTok’s caption feature and make sure you type out the important parts of the text, to make sure the words in your video contribute to you ranking in the search engine. If you want to know more about adding keywords in your videos, read our blog here for the full run-down.
A RECAP
Here’s a recap, cause we know it’s a lot.
ditch the follow for follow method & engagement pods, rather opt for organic growth methods
5-8 hashtags on Instagram is ideal
don’t rely on trending sounds to grow
quality > quantity
prioritize longer videos
use in-app captions instead of fancy outside apps
