Big bothers in social media

As a social media manager, there are parts of my job that are a dream; like working from the comfort of my home in penguin pajama pants.  There are also parts of it that are indescribably irritating; the people that believe “Facebooking all day” is a job.  Of course, the good far outweighs the small annoyances that I have to deal with but there are definitely some things I could take or leave when it comes to social media practices of other people. 

I’m not only talking about business accounts here, as many private account holders are some of the worst offenders when it comes to annoying behavior.  Actually, when it comes to business accounts, I’m more tolerant of ridiculousness, as many people don’t have the budget for a social media manager, and they’re trying to make things work on their own.  Social media is a tricky game, and can be tough to navigate on your own, especially for your business.  However, as a social media manager, I’ve had my eyes opened to nearly everything you can see on the internet, and sometimes it just isn’t pretty.  Here are my top six irritants when it comes to personal profiles on social media.

Personal Social Media Profiles:

• Spoilers – You all know who you are. You just watched The Walking Dead or Grey’s Anatomy and you CAN’T WAIT to talk about it on social.  Stop it, because no amount of **Spoiler Alert** headings are going to make me unsee the fact that you just told me who died.  Give it a couple of days, I promise you can wait to talk about it.  Or, get out of your house and talk to actual people.
• Comment Heroes – These are the people that like to come in on a serious post with a zinger. They are either in full support of what you’ve said and they back you up with other people who are spewing hateful words, or they’re the ones doing the spewing.  Sometimes the comment heroes do more harm than good, however, because they always tend to take it too far and you’re stuck trying to explain to your boss why one of your friends is calling them a stream of profanities.
• Joint Profiles – Stop with the joint profiles, married people. We get it.  You’re married.  You’re still two separate people, and you both are allowed to have your own friends.  This particular phenomenon brings back horrific Bridget Jones’ Diary memories of the smug marrieds.  We all know you want to have your own profile, but your wife thinks it will be “totes cute” to share one, and vice versa.
• Cause Crusaders – I get it; you’re dedicated to a cause. I am too.  I fight for the plight of marine mammals being held in captivity, but I do it quietly and I pick my battles.  I will share a well written article in support of a good cause, but I don’t share every single thing that comes across my screen, and certainly not for every single cause.  It’s all good, you like to support things, but my news feed shouldn’t be a gigantic banner ad about what you support.
• Oversharers – You think this means that people that are sharing photos of their kids using the potty or close up kissing pictures, but it’s not. I’m addressing the people who post no relevant content of their own, and only share memes, videos, and others’ content.  You look like you don’t have an original thought in your head.  Give a quick little status update about your life a spin.
• Threateners/Challengers – This one is fitting to round out this list, as they’re easily the most annoying people on the internet. This particular group is made up of the people that post pictures of abused animals and tell you that if you don’t share the pictures, more animals will be abused.  They will also say that if we don’t share a post that we don’t care about cancer, we hate puppies, or we’re not all that into America.  I get it that you’re passionate, but don’t tell me that I need to pat the top of my head and hop on one foot to prove that I don’t want kittens to die.

For a social media manager, we MUST have a presence on the networks, but it doesn’t mean we have to enjoy them.  I love seeing what I can do for my clients, via their pages, but if I could delete my profiles, I would.  I detest running across these things on my newsfeed, when truthfully, I’m just trying to look at cute pictures of my niece and nephew and maybe do some creeping.  If you fall into one of the above categories, or all of them, know that you’re driving people insane and try to change at least some of the behavior.  No one is perfect, we all get that, but please try and hold it together on your social media profiles.