So much time and resources are spent to develop content for social media accounts. The more account there are, the bigger and more diverse a social media team will be. Even though we double-check and triple-check the grammar and the orthography of our texts, every now and then, an error will slip in. Oddly enough, those mistakes actually generated more engagement than usual. So, this got me wondering: should we continue to strive for perfection or should we simply pull the wool over our followers’ eyes and present them with content written of a subpar quality?
My social media department quickly put this theory to the test. We decided to run this experiment over 4 weeks where on week 1, we would allow the regular low level of mistakes in our content, and each following week increase by 5% the amount of errors.
At the end of the month, we compiled the engagement rates and we find out some interesting results:
- 1-5% mistakes generated an increased engagement with positive comments from our followers.
- 5-10% mistakes generated an increased engagement but with a mix of positive and negative comments from our followers.
- 10-15% mistakes generated an increased engagement with mostly negative comments from our followers.
We actually didn’t dare to continue pass 15%.
We came to realize that mistakes can be overlooked or forgiven if they fall under our followers’ perception of what can be passed as “an honest mistake”, where we determined the boundary to be under 5% of the text. Going pass that limit did increase the engagement but with a more negative trend, which would put at risk our viewership.
What are your thoughts on my topic? Please leave a comment below and I will respond.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 