I have been working on social media for about two years now and learning how to use it more effectively.  I have also learned how easy it is to make mistakes and irritate, instead of endear, your intended audience.  I have seen many authors and other self-promoters repeatedly make these five mistakes which can be easily avoided:

1. Do not ‘like’ your our own status or photographs – it comes across as egotistical.
2. Do not post updates of “If you have a beautiful son (or daughter) and am proud of them, share it – I have.”  This is also egotistical as your son (or daughter) comes from your gene pool, so you are flattering yourself.
3. Do not automatically ‘join’ friends to groups you create.  Either invite them on their wall, send a tweet, or use some other method to inform them of groups they may be interested in.  I have been added to groups that I have been embarrassed to join and were completely opposite of my belief systems.  Then I have to go to the trouble of removing myself.  Do this to me and you are unfriended!
4. Do not threaten people to share or like and tell them they are a bad person if they don’t.  Most of these posts are only used to build lists of contact information which is sold to others.  Same for “If you can solve this, you are a genius” type of posts.  People who do either lose a lot of credibility in my opinion.
5. Do not incessantly post the same damn promotion again and again several times daily without any other sharing, insights, or support for others.  You look like a dubious one-hit wonder at best.  If you insist at self-promoting relentlessly, at least try to mask it between posts and tweets that show you actually care about others.

I am sharing what type of behavior annoys me and others with whom I have discussed this.  Being a good member of social media circles is a two-way street.  Do not be arrogant, presumptuous or persistently annoying!

 

© 2013. Steve Shipley, author of Wine Sense, due out early 2014
Twitter: @inkitpub
Twitter: @shipleyaust
Still Stupid at Sixty (published under my writing pseudonym Blake Stevens)