Are you making these four mistakes on social media?

In our experience of social media, we have seen a lot of mistakes! Some are minor, some are major. But there are a few mistakes that we see cropping up frequently. Here are the 4 most frequent mistakes we see schools making:

1. Starting a tweet with an @ sign

A mistake that nearly everybody has made on Twitter at some point is beginning a tweet with an @username. The problem with this is that only people who follow yourself and the person you are mentioning will see that tweet.

For example, if you tweet “@intSchools share lots of great school marketing articles. Check some of them out here - blog.interactive-schools.co.uk”, only people who follow you and us would see that tweet. That is because beginning a tweet with @intSchools would be a reply.

What you can do, and you have probably seen people use this, is start your tweet with a full stop. This would share your tweet to the feed of everybody who follows you.

“.@intSchools share lots of great school marketing articles. Check some of them out here - blog.interactive-schools.co.uk”

This would go out to all of your followers.

2. Sharing everything at once

You must have experienced it before: an explosion of posts from somebody you follow. An how often are they interesting? Rarely. Unless it is a thread that offers a debate, do not share everything at once.

Don’t bombard people with tweets, photos, posts, links - think of social as a marathon, not a sprint.

3. Using hashtags unnecessarily

Overuse of hashtag is annoying, and offers no added benefit to the poster. Some people believe using lots of hashtags will mean your post is likely to reach a larger audience, and therefore pick up more interactions and followers.

Two hashtags per post - maximum!

4. Auto-posting to other channels

Each channel your school uses will be for a specific reason. No channel will be used for the exact same reason. That means that each of your posts should be tailored for that channel - each channel has it’s own ‘slang’.

Tailor your content for each specific channel you use. Yes, it takes time. But the rewards will be there for you to see.

Have you fallen foul to any of these mistakes? Don’t be embarrassed! Let us know if you’re going to be any changes to the way you use social.

And remember, we can come and train your school to ensure mistakes are minimised on social media.