13 Signs You're Heading for Social Media Obscurity

Social Media is all about engagement. But unfortunately, lots of people – and the companies they represent – still don’t understand that a one-way conversation isn’t a conversation at all. It’s a broadcast.

In the interest of helping you see if your business has a problem, here are a few questions to ask yourself. Check for these thirteen signs your social media program may be falling short of the mark:

It takes 9 months to respond to a tweet. This really happened to me. The response was something like, “Thanks for tweeting, we didn’t understand your message…” Why bother? Really.

You never respond to or acknowledge social media mentions of your company name. After all, you’re just listening.

You proudly say things like, “I don’t follow anyone…“

All of your posts are about you or your products, because social media is all about leads.

Your auto-DM welcome message is a sales pitch, “Thanks for following, check out my…(blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, special deal)“. (Whether you should even have an auto-reply is a topic for different post.)

You automatically follow-back everyone who follows you, without checking out their profiles.

Or you are a finicky follower, looking for high Klout scores and automatically unfollowing anyone who doesn’t follow you.

Your favorite way to engage others is, “Please ‘Like’ us on (Facebook, LinkedIn).”

You put social media icons on your website and called it a day thinking, “Our social media program is off to a great start.”

You’re still worried what will happen when someone says something bad about your company online.

You have no idea what that college intern you hired is saying on your social media sites. If they’re posting, it must be good.

The legal department controls your social media presence.

Company policy prohibits employees from mentioning the company on social media.