36 Great Ways to Fail at Social Media

Published on 26 October 2009 by in Social Media

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<Edit: As some readers might have misunderstood my post, here some clarification: !!!ATTENTION: THIS POST CONTAINS SARCASM AND IRONY!!!/End Edit>

A: “Hey, with your new company and all, do you do social media? I heard it can bring you lots of sales and traffic to your website!”

B: “Ah, shut up, I tried this stuff. I set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page and all and spend all this time on it and it did not get me a single lead! Social media is a waste of time!”

A lot of people, companies and entrepreneurs share this point of view. If you want to agree with them, follow these great instructions to finally proof that Social Media is a waste of time. Here is a list of 36 great ways to fail at Social Media:

# 1: Setting up a Facebook page and a Twitter account is all you need to do!

# 2: Have your niece be your social media expert, because she has 300+ friends on Facebook!

# 3: Update your Twitter account every 2 weeks, you don’t want to be a spammer, right?

# 4: Let’s create a company blog on a WordPress domain!

# 5: Sending every single link to your company website or blog!

# 6: Set your Twitter account to protected!

# 7: Make your Facebook page only visible to your fans!

# 8: Tweet about your coffee! Every single morning! Multiple times, somebody could have missed it!

# 9: Send your Followers a DM with a link to a spam website!

# 10: Not  have a single post on Twitter and expect people to follow you!

# 11: Write about yourself, all the time, everywhere!

# 12: Never, ever give advice or share a link! Don’t you ever do that, understood!!!

# 13: Use the pushiest sales talk you can think of! Create new words: Ultraextremeawesomeness!

# 14: TWEET ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS! EXTRA POINTS!!!

# 15: Have a tirade about your competitors! They suck and it is your duty to warn people about them!

# 16: Even better: Randomly retweet other people’s tweets and send your followers to your competition!

# 17: End every sentence in your tweet with an exclamation point! Darn I am good at this one!

# 18: No matter what, do not listen to what other people have to say! Don’t read your DM’s @’s and delete ALL comments on your blog

# 19: Never use the Search.Twitter to search for your company name. Reading this could harm your company’s reputation.

# 20: Use different user names, spellings and logos for every profile you create

# 21: Now I am getting mean: Let your accountant write your blog posts ;-)

# 22: Spend a fortune on the blog design, and $ 3.00 per blog post!

# 23: Your number one goal should be: have 200,000 followers on twitter, so always follow as many people as Twitter allows you

# 24: RT your links to your website at least 2 x per hour! People are not on Twitter 24/7! You have to get the word out!

# 25: Only Facebook and Twitter really count as Social Media

# 26: Close comments on your blog! You are the boss, your customers should listen to you, not the other way around!

# 27: Oh wow, my lucky number

# 28: Talk bad about customers, with several Million users, how should they ever find you?

# 29: Use your keywords, at least twice in every paragraph, so be sure to use your keywords in your paragraphs at least twice!

# 30: Switch all your marketing budget to social media, because if you don’t find 1,000 new customers by next month, you will be out of business

# 31: Don’t waste your time reading other blog posts, especially those related to your industry! You know it better anyways

# 32: Content on your blog is not important. Rather spend this time to write comments on any blog you can find.

# 33: But don’t waste time writing lengthy comments either: Two words max, but be sure to use your keywords as your commentator name

# 34: Don’t worry about “target market”! Your product/service is so great, everyone will want it

# 35: If your blog does not get you a lead or a sale in less than 2 weeks -> stop it, it’s not working!

# 36: It is ok to copy your content from other websites and you do not have to reference them in any way. Social Media is about sharing right?

I hope you liked this little list of ways to fail at Social Media! Do you have more? Please share them and I promise I will delete them without reading!

14 Responses to “36 Great Ways to Fail at Social Media”

  1. [...] 36 Great Ways to Fail at Social Media | Market Your Startup [...]

  2. [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by MariaAbroad, greghaase. greghaase said: RT @MariaAbroad 36 Great Ways to Fail at Social Media – http://bit.ly/d3CPL [...]

  3. Hesham says:

    Hey! this is great tips, I found your blog at BlogEngage, thanks for sharing!

  4. Jeny says:

    If you want to have such a bad content on your business blog, follow advice #29. I wonder what kind of article would come out, if you use your keyword AT LEAST TWICE EVERY PARAGRAPH.

  5. Maria says:

    Hey Hesham,

    I am glad you clicked through to my blog and I am happy you liked my list! ;-) I hope everybody got my irony… was not quite sure about that!!!

  6. marketyourstartup says:

    Hey Jeny,

    Thanks for your comment. I am not sure, if you missed my irony or if I missed yours. My post about the 36 ways to fail at social media is of course completely ironic!!! PLEASE, dear companies, DO NOT DO THIS!!!

  7. Jeny says:

    Hi there marketyourstartup,

    I do understand what you mean here in this article, my comment is in a sarcastic tone too :-)

    Jeny

  8. Maria says:

    Haha, I hoped so! ;-) But it seems other people were a bit confused about the nature of this post as well. I thought it was clear though! Thanks for your comments, Jeny!

  9. Angela says:

    Love the unique approach to this topic. Lucky for me I already follow almost all of these but some were good reminders and one or two I may not have known but you didn’t hear that from me.
    .-= Angela´s last blog ..Submit Articles =-.

  10. Maria says:

    Thanks Angela! Glad to hear you liked it! ;-)

  11. Thanks for this post. Very informative. I liked it a lot. In fact it spawned a post idea for my own blog. 35 ways to fail at blogging.
    http://www.integralwebsolutions.co.za/Blog/EntryId/474/35-Ways-to-fail-at-blogging.aspx

    While reading this I had to check and see if I was guilty of any myself. I won’t say.
    .-= Robert Bravery´s last blog ..35 Ways to fail at blogging. =-.

  12. Phillip Gibb says:

    I am going to succeed in Social Media because I have used SEO in the comment and commented at problogger and chrisbrogan, oh and here.
    woot
    lol
    great post – keeps one humble
    .-= Phillip Gibb´s last blog ..Why I want your Comments =-.

  13. Justin says:

    Can you add
    “I’m so huge on Twitter I bought the T-shirt”

    Great list
    Fun

    Cheers

  14. JR says:

    I think my two favorite are #8 and #21. It is amazing how much meaningless tweets that are out there. I also love how many people use a niece, son or friend to handle their social media, because they have a twitter and facebook account. I found another blog that you might find useful that discussed how some use social media as their only source of marketing

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