There is a hot new social tactic we have noticed that can seriously backfire for your business.

That tactic is using the @ Follower or @ everyone tags for increased reach on your regular organic posts.  While it can increase reach in the short term, it is also a great way to LOSE followers when it is used irresponsibly on posts that are simply not that relevant or important to the followers themselves.  This method of increasing reach pushes the boundaries of being intrusive and can be thought of as being spammy. This tactic will quickly desensitize your audience to your messaging and cause some of your audience to unlike or unfollow so that the spammy notifications stop.

Here are two ways to bring this tactic into perspective.

1. Remember that classic fable of the boy who cried wolf ?? Using these tags in this way can play out just the same. There are only so many times you can tag everyone before they realize your information is just not that important. Your “Hey, this is important” will fall on deaf ears AND the intrusiveness of the notifications will get you removed altogether to quiet the notifications, making room for more important ones.
2. Think of it like a Company Group email and some lovely person hits reply all… It boggs up your inbox with a conversation or information that you never wanted. You open the first couple and see what is going on, but quickly, you start hitting delete to anything with that subject line. And everyone in the lunch room knows who started it… and they won’t be invited for 5 o’clock bevies.

Remember to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Social media is meant to be a two sided conversation – not just blasting your message as loud a possible.

Our advice: While this tagging method may be important once in a while, overuse can really hinder the trust you have built in your brand. Reserve it only for communications that impact ALL of your customers or clients; like major service changes.