Social Media Pet Peeves from a Social Media Consulant

Wow, that title made me sound so much more important than I am.  I work with Social Media every day, both in my day job, business and daily personal life so I see quite a few things that just get me going.  Did you know that America spends over 100 billion hours on Social Media every single month?  There are 140 million Twitter users -- with those stats, I'm sure everyone has a ton of pet peeves!  

These are in no particular order but the order they popped into my head.

Automated Direct Messages - No one cares if you have your own webdesign business, I didn't ask you.  No, I don't want your services or your unwanted direct message.  All it's doing is giving me another notification flag on my home screen, which I don't like!  Please, don't set up automated direct messages, they are horribly annoying.  If you post and engage correctly, you will get hits and clients without having to spam peoples' direct message inbox.

Do not set your Twitter to automatically post to Facebook -- This annoys me so much.  If I'm on your Twitter and Facebook, I don't need my timeline to be spammed with posts I already saw on your Twitter.  Alternatively, if I'm not on your Twitter but on your Facebook; there's a reason.  Please stop posting all your status updates to Facebook, it spams other people's timelines, makes them mad and just looks desperate for attention.

Stop Sending Game Requests -- I don't have time to play Facebook games (other than songpop) and if you actually read my Facebook you would see that between working a day job, working freelance at night and having two I don't have any time to sit there and play games.  If you see that I am not playing a specific game, there's a reason.

Do not over tweet - Yeah...don't send 50 tweets in an hour.  I will unfollow you because 99% of the time, those tweets are completely useless.  I don't care about you having to pee, or your dog snoring, or you spilling soda on yourself...Unless you're someone special like Bruno Mars, Bradley Cooper or someone who I adore.

Do not over promote yourself -- Twitter and Facebook are fine for promotional uses, hell I use the platforms everyday for that reason.  Just don't over promote.  You have to engage your followers in order to get them to pay any attention to you or your business in the first place so post normal every day things with some promotion sprinkled in.  Customers or clients want to know that there is a person behind the computer screen that you see.

Foursquare or Check Ins - I don't care if you stopped at Target for a bag of Twizzlers, you don't have to check into that location just for that.  Well, if you do this every once in a while it's ok, but when you do this every single day and check into every place you visit, it gets annoying.  Please stop.

When people reply with one word:  Oh yeah, this really gets my blood boiling.  It's like -- If I spent the time to write and perfect that Twitter post, why don't you actually say something worth listening to.  Don't say:

• "LOL"
• "Yes/No"
• "Ok"

And so on, spend time writing back to me.  

All Sponsored or All Automated Posts -- I do sponsored posts and automate my Tweets, Facebook posts when I know I"m going to be away from Social Media for an extended period of time but I don't do it everyday.  If you don't have time to post and have to automate everything, why don't you hire someone who can do it for you? (Business/Blogger wise!)  If you are just too lazy to tweet or post -- why are you on social media in the first place? 

#Hashtags that don't have anything to do with your post --  If you're posting about your dinner, why are you tagging #Kmart or #iPads?  (Random thought! lol)  No one wants to search for a particular tag and see your completely unrelated tweet.  If you're doing this for promotional reasons, trust me it won't work.  People will just skip right over your post.

#Hashtags on Facebook -- I'm going to piggy back off the Hashtag posts and say this,  if you're writing a post on Facebook, don't #hashtag unless it's an inside joke! (I know I have hashtag jokes! lol)  No one is going to search Facebook with "tags" and find your post -- Hashtags are for twitter.

There is such a thing as Facebook and Twitter etiquette and there are so many people who need to learn it.  I go through my Twitter feed every single day and if I see someone post something useless, I check their page.  If every post is like that, I delete them off of Twitter.  I don't have time to browse through posts that are just going to get me angry! :)

What are your Social Media pet peeves?

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Sometimes adults play like kids!

I grew up in the days of the original Nintendo with the very pixellated characters and corny games. We had Game Boy to play with when we traveled (and man was the Game Boy a brick -- not to mention black and white!!) and I remembered when the Game Boy Color came out, it was such a great advance in technology!  Yet still the images on the screen were very pixellated and the games not too interesting.  Our computers were IBM's and had big huge floppy disks.  There weren't too many games for our computer, but we had to use a joy stick when we did play the few games we had!  No internet...  Of course, my kids and their friends find all of this so hard to believe.  Games weren't as interesting as they were now??  Game Boys were huge and black and white?  Big floppy disks, what?!  I actually found one of the Nintendo games, Game Boy systems and Floppy Disks to show my kids and their friends.  They were in disbelief!  (Ha, also remember Sega Gamegear??)

Kids, these days, have it so easy.  They start using a computer at age 3 or 4 and get cell phones by the time they're 9 or 10.  Everything is handed to them since they can just text their friends or IM their friends!  My kids (2 and 4) have game systems. (Leapster for Olivia and a Nintendo DS for Alayna)  We have a Wii as well.  They have their fun games on their systems and sure they're addicting!

As much as I yell at them to put down their games, I can't be a hypocrite.  I am absolutely obsessed with a Facebook game called Petville.  I'm sure ALL of you know what it is, and most of you probably play it.

When I first downloaded this, I wasn't sure what to expect from a web based FB game, but it was awesome.  It reminded me of the old tamogachi games and nano pets. 

Petville is a game in which you create a pet that youh have to clean, feed, furnish it's house, clean other friend's houses/pets etc...  If you forget to feed your pet, he gets taken to the pound when he goes awry looking for food!  It's a cute game that makes you feel good when you see the Petville coins rack up! (For awesome Petville gear or your pet's house!)  

I am so obsessed with this game and I do freely admit it!!  Does anyone have Facebook and plays Petville?  If so, I'd love to add you to my neighborhood!  You can add me on Facebook here and just let me know you have Petville! :)

So I have a question...

Does anyone else have an obsession with Petville?  If not, what Facebook games do you play? 

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