Ignoring a Social Media Network Can Damage Your Social Media Presence

How many social media network accounts does your business have? Every week, we recommend businesses to hop on the latest trending social network bandwagon, whether it’s to promote brand culture on Instagram or engage your audience with Vine videos. According to the eBizMBA Guide, there are currently 15 social networking sites with over 30 million unique monthly visitors; depending on the size of your business, your company may be required to join at least half of these to maintain a steady social media presence.

It’s not a surprise that sometimes, the pressure to maintain all accounts results in neglecting your brand’s social media presence on at least one social media network. And it doesn’t have to be completely abandoned in order to be considered neglected—a decreased frequency in posts and lack of replies to your audience’s comments is enough to tarnish your brand’s online reputation. To make sure your time is evenly distributed among all your social media accounts, we’ve come up with a list of reasons why neglecting a social network hurts your social media presence—and how to address these issues.
3 ways ignoring a social media network can damage your social media presence
1. Ignoring a social media network betrays your audience’s expectations

Remember what lead to your brand to joining the social network in the first place—it’s a great way to interact with current customers and educate potential customers about your company. But if your Twitter followers are greeted by the default egg display picture, and witness sporadic updates, they receive the opposite message: you don’t have time for your social media audience, and you don’t finish what you started. My guess is that’s not how your brand wants to be perceived.
2. Ignoring a social media network can cost you online followers—and potential customers

People sometimes find it more convenient to tweet a comment or a concern using the brand’s official Twitter handle, instead of putting in a phone call or submitting a comment card. By ignoring your online audience’s feedback you risk not only losing those customers, but also failing to address the potential hurdles in your services or product development. Not paying attention to your online audience can cause you to lose followers on your social networks, and even potential customers.
3. Neglecting a social media network can tarnish your brand’s online reputation

Your brand’s online reputation management isn’t so hard if you don’t neglect the social media networks you’re on. Decreased attention means a higher chance of committing one of many social media faux pas that could seriously threaten your brand’s reputation. To make matters worse, if you don’t regularly monitor your accounts, you miss the opportunity for timely correction or removal of the culprit post, thus risking an even bigger backlash.
How to avoid neglecting a social media network
1. Create social profiles on the same networks as your audience

The most prominent reason why people neglect their social media presence is because they chose a social media network that’s not the top choice for their audience. The best way to avoid this situation is by creating a social media profile that aligns with your company’s objectives. Most importantly, follow your target audience to the social media network of their choice: for example, if your goal is to talk to professionals in the marketing industry, then you should definitely be on LinkedIn. If you don’t think you can spare more time or effort on another social media network, it’s better to avoid making an account altogether. Absence from a social network is better than neglected social media presence.
2. Create a social media content schedule

Once you’ve created your social media profiles that you have committed to maintaining, the next step is to create an effective way to manage your social media content. One way to do this is by creating a schedule for engaging content to publish on your social networks. This will help you keep track of planned posts across all of your brand’s social media networks. Once you’ve created your social media content plan, you can start scheduling Twitter messages and other social media posts to ensure your social media profile doesn’t lay dormant.
3. Use a social media management tool

An easy way to ensure no social media network gets left behind is to use a social media management tool. The Hootsuite dashboard allows you to manage social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and much more, all in one place. You can monitor, engage, and converse with your audience in one place. Additionally, it can complement your social media content planning by scheduling posts in advance.