5 Signs You’re a Social Spammer and 5 Ways to Stop

“Hey everyone, check out my new post!”
“Find a solution by visiting the link in my bio.”
“Don’t forget that this offer expires at midnight!”

Sound familiar?

You post relentlessly on social media. You have all the accounts. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Vero. You’re taking great photos. You’re filming quality videos. You’re creating awesome content.

But why isn’t anyone interested? Because you’re spamming us and we hate you for it. Okay, hate’s a strong word, but you’re not getting our follows, our likes, or our shares. Here are five signs that you’re a social spammer and five ways to stop doing it.

5 SIGNS YOU’RE A SOCIAL SPAMMER

1. You’re always telling us to “Check Out My (Blog/Photo/Video)!”

It’s at the point where we feel like we’re always investing in this relationship and we’re tired of it. We’ve spent hours of our lives reading your blog, liking your photos, and watching your videos… wishing we could be more like you. Traveling the world. Making lots of money. Getting in the best shape of your life. But this one time we commented on your video– we spent like 10 minutes rewording our insightful comment. And you didn’t even LIKE it. You probably didn’t even see it.

2. You’re trying to solve ALL of our problems.

“Yeah, I got issues, but you got ‘em too.” You’ve got a solution for everything. No, we can’t manage our time, we don’t know how to make more money, and we’re fat. Now you– you’ve got it all together. And we want to learn from you. But not everything and not all at once. Since we started following you, we’ve become more aware of our issues every day. Because you keep telling us about all the problems we probably have.

3. You’re losing your niche.

You post about anything and everything. It’s great that you’ve got several businesses going, but if we’re following your account to read about sports products, why are you posting about repairing antique watches? We haven’t worn watches since ’99, including our Apple Watches because we never charge them. Okay, so this next post is a link to a picture of your dog wearing a raincoat… Hold on, do you want us to buy dog clothes? We don’t even own a dog. What are you even about, anyway, @footballgear82? It looks like we’ve grown apart.

4. You’re clickbaiting us.

Why does everything have to involve a click with you? Yes, you need people to visit your page to get them to convert, but when your post is BORING and all it contains is half a sentence and a link, we may click a time or two, but honestly, we’re about to stop following you.

Don’t make promises your content can’t deliver. “5 EASY STEPS TO START TRAVELING THE WORLD TOMORROW.” Oh, this looks good! “STEP 1: QUIT YOUR JOB.” Wait, what? We have bills, debt, kids… “STEP 2: SELL ALL OF YOUR STUFF.” Huh? Where’s the EASY part? And if it’s a video, PLEASE tell us it’s a video. Or use the word WATCH. Give us a hint. We’re not always in an environment conducive to watching videos.

5. You’re posting too much of the same.

We know, we know… you’ve been told to post several times a day on each platform. We got it. Your problem is that you’re posting the same thing over and over. You’re a broken record. We feel like Bill Murray listening to “I Got You Babe” over here. You got us to follow you on every social network, but it’s frustrating when we see the same thing over and over and over and over throughout all of our social media accounts.

We know you’re just trying to reach those who may have missed the post, but at what cost? Our sanity! We can deal with it when you have a promo deadline coming up, but you can’t have a free pass on the daily.

These are going to be hard habits to BREAK. But you can do it!

5 WAYS TO STOP SOCIAL SPAMMING

1. Stop telling us what to do all the time.

Calling us to action is good. But just not on every single post. And your only comments on our posts don’t need to tell us to check out your content. Or find a solution at your link. Which leads us to #2.

2. Just talk to us. Oh, and listen too.

You need to engage with us. Because social media is… social. Liking our photos and posts is cool and all, but how about a share now and then? Comment that you like our post. You’ll make our day. Give us some constructive criticism or feedback. If you give us some love, we’ll probably check out your content anyway. You get hundreds of comments on your posts. We get five. Trust us, we’ll read it and we’ll engage with you.

3. Focus on what’s important to us.

We’ve got other interests and we’re happy to see that you do too. But we follow you because we share the common interest you built your social media account around. You don’t need to throw things at our walls to see if they stick. Just mention other interests in your content now and then when they apply, but don’t bombard our social feeds with unrelated posts.

4. Give us instant value.

Don’t make us follow a link with every post or comment. Let your social account have some value as well. If there’s room for a link, that’s cool, but prove to us that it’s probably worth clicking. Use your account to give us a tip now and then. If we scroll through your feed or view your profile, what do we learn? Hopefully, not just your URL.

5. Change it up if you can, but PLEASE don’t repeat yourself.

This is really where strategic use of value comes into play. If you’ve written a new post, or recorded a new video, pick out a few key points and share one of them on each post. That way we’re reminded about the content, but you’re whetting our appetite for more and more. If one of those points especially resonates with us, you may even get a share out of it.

There are far more signs of social spamming that I didn’t have time to discuss in this post. What are some others that you’ve noticed? I’ll start the discussion by adding another sign in the comments below.

– Eric