Are you getting tired of Facebook or some of the behavior of your friends on the site? Facebook is the most popular social network with over 1 billion active users. And with great popularity comes some shameful characters looking to tap into Facebook’s viral market to sell you their crappy products or scheme your money through affiliate links or worse.
So if you happen to find yourself doing any of the 11 following things, you should look to stop doing so immediately before all of your friends look to jump ship!
1. Tagging Random People in Photos
Please stop tagging people you barely know in photos that have nothing to do with them. It’s one thing when your buddy tags you in an unphotogenic pic, then sends it out to friends for some laughs, because, hey, at least it’s you. But the people I’m talking about upload photos and tag as many people as they can to try and gin up as many likes as possible. This is a classic move by spammers so be cautious of anyone who does this. I’ve had to call out several individuals over the years, even friends for their random tagging, and you should do the same in any suspect post. Sending a personal message to them to stop could work, too, but I feel like if some goofball wants to tag me in every one of his posts, he must be looking for my input so I give it to him publicly right then and there. Yes, revenge is a dish best served cold…
2. Cross-Posting From Twitter
Look, I understand you’re a little short on content and things to say. We all basically post the same stuff on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. but at least have the decency to not automatically send your Twitter tweets to Facebook. For one, you’ll get much less engagement posting to Facebook via any third-party app let alone Twitter which basically disregards Facebook etiquette. If you do this, it’s a clear sign you’re not really engaged on Facebook or maybe just too lazy to post yourself, either way a fail.
3. Liking Your Own Posts
So you’ve just posted the cutest cat or baby picture ever. That’s cool, I guess. But then you go ahead and like your photo too. Well, I know you already like the post, aren’t you the one who just shared the damn thing? Besides being annoyingly repetitive, the real reason people feel the need to do this is that the action of liking the post will again show up in the streaming news ticker, giving the post even more exposure (it’s potentially seen twice). These are typically the moves of self-proclaimed “social media gurus” or people who just feel insecure about their status posts.
4. New Page Invites
Look, I understand you need to create a page for your business, but please stop inviting me to your half-ass Facebook pages. Instead post interesting content to your own page, share it on your profile as well (so your friends see it), and if people find it interesting they will follow. It’s almost not your fault, as creating a page and inviting all your friends can be tempting, but most of your friends won’t like your page and maybe they won’t like you anymore either. And the ones who do like it would’ve probably found it anyways without your begging them to do so. So don’t do this…
5. App Requests
If you’re on Facebook all day playing Farmville, that should be embarrassing enough, and the last thing you should ever want to do is invite your friends and alert them to your nerdiness. And I can’t even explain to you the ill feeling I get when I receive a request to join Klout, for example, even though I’ve already registered, from one of my less intelligent friends.
6. Suggesting Friends
Please stop suggesting I friend somebody else. You playing match-maker is a little creepy and I might start to question why you and I are friends instead. And it’s actually worse than creepy because, you see, on Facebook expert spammers pair up and start suggesting up to 50 random friends for each other. By doing this, the people they suggest will get the notification (in their friend requests) and may mistakenly think the spammers requested the friendship. In reality, the spammers want you to commit the first step by adding them as friends (essentially tricking you to friend request them). Facebook penalizes people for requesting too many friends, but spammers who pair up and suggest friends for each other escape notice since they are not actually doing the requesting.
7. Adding People to Random Groups
This one’s a big pet peeve of mine. A classic text-book spam artist move, people will add you to random groups without your knowledge and all of a sudden you’re signed up for every single notification for each posts to the group. If this happens to you, make sure to leave the group or at least turn off the notifications within the group settings, as well as question the friendship with the culprit who added you. You don’t want to be the person known for doing this on Facebook, it’s a huge red flag.
8. Off-base and Mass Messages
Stop sending mass messages with dozens of people attached. You’ve seen these before, like “please like my page” or “vote for me in this ridiculous award I can’t win,” etc. People loathe being addressed in this style, and if you really have something to say at the very least personalize your message to each individual or, better yet, refrain altogether from sending out mass messages. After all, it’s straight out of the guide to spamming.
9. The Ridiculous Event Invite
I’m honored you want me to come to your poetry reading in Siberia, but I’m not quite sure I’ll be able to make it. When you send mass requests to a bunch of people you don’t really know, it makes you seem inconsiderate and pretty much paints you as a spammer.
10. Overdone Like Buttons
Somehow I’ve ventured over to your blog only to be greeted by an alarming pop-up Facebook “like” box baiting me to like your page. And then, when that goes away, I can barely even see your blog post because of the 100 “like” buttons strategically placed throughout your site.
11. Poking People
Always sort of a joke, it might be time to finally retire this Facebook feature. Something just feels off every time you poke me. No matter how you cut it, there isn’t a single situation in which poking someone is acceptable.
If you are one of the millions of people committing these crimes on a daily basis, please refrain from doing so at once! You know who you are. I promise you whatever you’re trying to sell or market will have a much better chance if you come up with some honest hard-working tactics like creating or curating interesting and relevant content as opposed to relative social media douchebaggery.
