Your social media traffic suddenly dips or the engagement of your followers becomes stagnant. Why does that happen?

More often than not it’s the result of the tactics you follow. If something had been working for you for the past few years, it may not work for you now. Tactics become outdated and if you cling to them for too long.

You have to keep your ego aside in this and get back to the drawing board, to do some learning.

This write-up will discuss some of the obsolete social media tactics that you might be using. We have curated five such tactics for you, which you must leave right now.

Outdated tactic 1: Going overboard with links

Cluttering your content with links, hoping that it will pull in readers is an outdated tactic. It’s as irrelevant as joining a plethora of social media groups and posting your content there.

You need to stand out and be unconventional. But whatever your tactic is, the value of solid research is irreplaceable. You need to know what’s trending today and what’s trending tomorrow, and how are people reacting to those trends.

Once you know your audience, then write something that not only informs your audience but delights them too. You need to be aware of the emotions your words carry and the emotions that they might evoke.

These are the basics that you need to cover. Apart from that, you can take the help of certain tools like TweetReach.

It is a brilliant tool that gives you an idea of how far a tweet will impact. You just need to enter a hashtag or a keyword that you plan to use in your tweet.

You can get to know the top contributors that have used the same hashtags or keywords, and even the number of retweets having those hashtags and keywords, among other indicators.

Outdated tactic 2: Posting the same content on different social media platforms

This is the laziest of tactics and it’s better that you come off it. You simply cannot post the same content on Facebook, Linkedin, or Instagram.

Each of them works in their own way. Although there might be overlapping users, people have a different purpose when they access each of them.

Instagram is more about visual content. So if you copy-paste the same writeup to Instagram’s caption that you shared on Facebook, it won’t get it’s due.

In the case of Facebook and Linkedin, the difference is gradually narrowing down as people are becoming more informal on LinkedIn. But still, the posts on Linkedin carry professional undertones.

People on Linkedin want to connect professionally only, and they largely share experiences that helped them become a better professional.

Linkedin is being actively used for conversational marketing, where people post short and idea-driven content and try to strike a conversation with their connections. As far as the sponsored content goes, Facebook is still the better option.

So don’t be lazy while creating content. You need to work on multiple versions of your content if you want a good presence on all social media platforms.

Outdated tactic 3: Creating content that “You” want to create

Write content for your audience. It is as simple as that.

It’s understandable that you are passionate about a subject. Let’s say that you are passionate about cars. You can create a blog on that subject. It’s absolutely fine. But the problem starts when you start choosing your own topics.

This is where you need to keep your ego aside and search for topics which people like to read on. You may write a brilliant blog post on ‘Types of headlights’, but you won’t grab enough eyeballs or receive awesome comments if the topic is outdated.

To find the right topics or estimate the engagement of a blog article, you can use Google Trends.

You can search for the popularity of different topics like ‘Types of Headlights’ and ‘Types of Engines’, and create content accordingly.

This is how you can grow the viewership of your blog. You can even ask readers to suggest topics for future blog posts. In one of your blog posts, you can put a question like, “Any specific topic you want my views on? Do mention in the comment section”.

This is a good way to engage with your readers and know what they want. Also, don’t forget to leave a personalized message on their comments.

Outdated tactic 4: Sticking to Black Hat

There is nothing wrong in boosting your website’s ranking, only if you follow ethical ways. Back in the day and to some extent even today, people want quick results. There are social media accounts that use black hat  (unethical tactics) to crank up their “Likes” or “Following”.

In other words, they literally buy fake followers, likes, and shares, out of which 51% are not even humans. Most of them are bots that steal people’s identities and create fake accounts.

So many celebrities use fake followers to boost their social media presence. With a few stock photos and a few dollars, they can buy millions of fake followers and claim to be an influencer.

But people today are getting aware of such tactics. They are becoming good at distinguishing fake accounts from the genuine ones. Even if they look for influencers to boost their social media presence, they double-check influencer’s account by going through the feed and seeing the nature of likes and comments.

So black hat tactics might be taking the last few breaths.

Outdated tactic 5: Sending those robotic “Thank you” messages

Messenger bots have become popular and are here to stay. They streamline the customer support processes, which really helps in managing users.

That being said, you can’t take away personalization completely out of the picture. Especially when you are showing your gratitude to users or acknowledging them.

People want exclusivity, which a bot can’t give. If you are using auto-replies, then personalize them enough so that a user sees his or name after a “Thank You”.

You can’t send those cold and robotic “Thank you”. Even a five-year-old will know that they have been sent by a machine. So add value to your message. Ask for their suggestions or send them a gift voucher along with a Thank You Note.

You can use chatbots that are AI-powered so that your message comes across as friendly, understanding, and appreciative. In other words, make it more human.

Treat people like people. Sooner you start doing it, the better your results will be on your social media channels.

Hope you liked the write-up and would adopt effective social media tactics. This is the right way to go about it.