Carol Stephen
Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media
You’ve probably heard of the seven deadly sins, or maybe even grew up having to recite them from memory. But did you ever associate them with social media? Maybe you did on one of those long, sleepless nights. Here then are the seven dead sins for social media.
Lust Equals Popularity
Have you ever known someone who needed “social proof” (also known as followers)? If you end up buying followers, whether on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest, you could permanently hurt your reputation or throw off your analytics. People can tell if you’ve bought those followers, so there’s the embarrassment factor. And when you try to figure out when your real followers are online, all those fake followers in Estonia will throw off your numbers. No offense to any Estonians!
Sloths Refuse to Check Into Their Accounts
Sloth or Laziness
While adorable in their slowness, sloths enjoy hanging out in hammocks, eating fruit, and refusing to check into their accounts. A sloth would rather chill than post or comment or share. By the way, completely automating your social media accounts so the same post appears in multiple places without any change is definitely slothful.
It’s easy to act out when you can’t see who’s on the other end of that post
Wrath or Anger
It’s so easy to strike out at people when you’re sitting in your comfy computer chair, oversharing on Twitter or Facebook, isn’t it? And remembering that there’s an actual person who has to read your comments is tough to do sometimes. But realize that there’s someone just like you sitting on the receiving end before sending a flamer.
Don’t Let Greed Become One of Your Marketing Tools
Greed Is Greed
Similar to social media lust, greed would have you buying followers, when instead the focus should be on creating good content, sharing, and reaching out to others in your social media sphere. If greed is one of your marketing tools, as the above quote from Jon Foreman says, we lose part of our humanity. And become more like Gordon Gecko.
Greed Asks You To Buy Followers
Envy
Keeping up with the Joneses (or even the other moose) never works well. Instead of envying what someone else has done, why not measure yourself against yourself?
Keeping up with the other moose never works
Gluttony
On social media, gluttony is that inability to get offline. There’s always one more tweet to send, one more post to comment on, or one more meme to see. Gluttony results in burnout. Keeping balance can be difficult when there is so much information available. And being focused on quality over quantity is just as difficult.
Gluttony: There’s Always Another Baby Giraffe to Kiss
Pride or Vanity
Pride is what we feel when others comment on our beautiful photos, or our huge numbers of followers. When one of our posts go “viral” online our ego becomes enormous, and threatens to pop like a giant balloon. Pride has been called “the mother of all sins.” In social media terms, if you are always asking others to share your tweets because you think they’re so wonderful, follow you everywhere before anyone knows you, or ask for favors ceaselessly, then pride has taken hold.
Attention Feeds Our Pride
Is There An Eighth Sin?
Surely I must’ve missed one or two. Did I?
(221)
