Stop Doing This on Social Media

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Things you need to stop doing immediately on social media that are doing more harm than good (and making you look outdated).

This is an update on a list I wrote a long time ago.

Square Images or Videos!

Why you should care:

When social media algorithms see assets that do not follow their ‘best practice’ specs, they will not give your content the distribution (Reach) it deserves, even if it’s the best content in the world.

Always be careful of the dreaded ‘black bars’ on the top and bottom of your videos, they are signals to the algorithms that your content is ‘bad quality.’

Stop doing this:

I made a graphic to illustrate what I mean, but ever since Instagram merged videos into the Reels tab (in 2022), there’s been zero reason why you should EVER produce any asset in square form.

16:9 has become the VHS tape of social media formats - laughable and obsolete. I don’t care what your creative team/agency is producing for you, kill 16:9 on social immediately.

You’re losing up to 56% of screen ‘real estate’ when you’re using anything below an aspect ratio of 4:5. See below, people.

Giveaways, Competitions, etc.

Why you should care:

Here’s a little industry secret: Your giveaway is being circulated in group chats of people whose only job is to create fake personas and submit entries to every single brand doing giveaways.

Back in my agency days, we used to call these the ‘giveaway mafia.’ They don’t care about your brand and they’re not ‘loyal’ customers.

You’re attracting the wrong type of audience and they will probably re-sell whatever you’re giving away. Shut it down, please.

Stop doing this:

No giveaways to boost engagements, especially if it brings the ‘wrong’ type of engagement. No prizes, no competitions, and no voting or ‘submissions.’

Social media platforms moved away from this content and started labeling such posts as ‘engagement baiting’.

A quick look at the advertising solutions offered by any platform will show you that there’s no such “objective.” Giveaways belong in 2013 and should stay there.

Videos without Captions

Why you should care:

Users consume videos with or without sound (varies by platform). The numbers change frequently depending on the platform you’re looking at.

One thing that stood out to me last year is that broadcasters and IP (intellectual property) holders who invested in captioning their videos made significantly more revenues on monetized videos than those who didn’t.

Also, your audience includes people with accessibility issues and hearing impairment, being inclusive is a sign of good marketing.

Stop doing this:

Non-captioned videos belong in pre-2023 social media. In the last 12 months or less, we’ve seen many apps do a great job at offering auto-captioning and with the help of AI, you can start doing that with relative ease.

Don’t leave your audience guessing what’s happening in your videos, even if you’re only pushing out ads. Let. Them. Read. It.