With the increase in social media marketing, it is easy to overlook the fact that you may be spamming users. A business may assume that because this is a permissions-based style of marketing, clients are keen to hear about your products, latest developments on thoughts on various matters.

5 Top Tips to avoid / stop spamming users:

1. Cloned Content - one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to post identical content to all of your social networks. It looks unprofessional, uncreative, for users following you on multiple platforms, it falls right into the spam bull’s eye and finally, it may have a negative effect on your Google ranking.
2. Amend communications – establish exactly what the purposes of your posts are and who you are trying to reach. Target your clients / potential clients directly, not just a mass audience which you hope will end up favouring your offerings.
3. Pinpoint your audience – in order to post content which will not be perceived as spam, you need to understand what your audience finds valuable. Not being targeted with your audience means that you are pushing relationship boundaries with non-clients, which tips the scale in finding the perfect balance between being annoying and not being present on your social networks.
4. Visual stimulation – add visual content to your posts. You can include images, GIFs, short videos or even the ever popular mini-infographic. This prompts users to share your content because it is eye-catching and adds a sense of value to your content. Images are starting to play an important role in Google ranking factors. Make a point of adding Alt text to images on your website, even if you just copy the title tag – this ensures that if for some reason the user cannot see your image (perhaps because they have turned off their ‘Show Images’ function), it will be replaced by text to explain what they ought to be seeing instead.
5. Balance frequency – determine the most optimal way of getting your content to your audience, without bombarding them. If you make use of email marketing, stick to a minimal amount of mails per week. Be sure to include an easy method of unsubscribing to these mails so that said customers do not feel forcefully bound to your promotional materials. When using a social network such as Twitter, post throughout the day. If you have a lot of valuable content to share, once an hour is acceptable, but if you have less content, opt for sending out Tweets twice a day.

Twitter is a great platform for businesses to engage with not only their clients, but also with each other. Because of this, the social network has lain down some guidelines they use to identify and block spammers:

• Repeated follow churn (continuously following and unfollowing the same user/s).
• Buying followers.
• Being blocked by a large community of users.
• Repeatedly sending out a specific mass invitation to followers.
• Too many posts which contain links.
• Serial accounts.
• A large number of misleading content updates which intends to draw attention, such as posting a keyword in your bio which has nothing to do with you, e.g. #IamPrinceHarry but your company sells paper.

If you are flagged as a company or individual who spams, your credibility instantly goes out the door. In addition to that, when you glance over these social network’s various guidelines, it is clear that spamming is taken very seriously.

Mari Roelofse is a Digital Journalist & Content Editor for Sound Idea Digital | mari@soundidea.co.za | Sound Idea Digital | www.soundidea.co.za