Is Engagement at the center of your digital strategy? Likely yes.  But is it possible that you are working at cross-purposes, spending time and resources on negative activities that actually result in disengagement?  If so, you’re not alone.

Use this post as a checklist: how many of these seventeen negative activities do you recognize?  Or perhaps have done yourself?

1) Too much: For every marketing activity, there is a point of diminishing marginal returns: one additional erg of effort may not provide a corresponding benefit.  At the limit, too much interaction will overwhelm the target audience, and have the opposite impact.

2) Too little:  Similarly, a very low level of activity may not register on an audience’s radar. Achieving a critical momentum is important; gauge this through the number of shares, comments, likes, follows… and transactions.

3) Too salesy:  While there is a role for sales messages, this is often a turn-off when the audience is not ready for a message about purchasing.   Delivering the wrong message at the wrong time kills engagement.

4) Too contrived:  Most people can smell a fake conversation a mile away.  The worst: vendors asking leading questions about their own products and services.

5) Too stupid:  Sometimes it is better to keep your mouth shut, than opening it and proving your ignorance.  Getting smart people on your team, using an editorial calendar, and proofing posts or emails are “smart” things to do.

6) Without permission:  Nothing annoys an audience more than an expectation gap.  An example: your Twitter feed promises topic A once each day, yet you send topic B five times every day.  Or if they are bombarded with commercial offers to an email address harvested from their Social Media profile.

7) No Social URL:  It has become almost standard to use social icons (the Facebook F, the Twitter bird, etc) in real-world venues, as a clue to an organization’s Social Media community.  But without the actual URL, how are people to know where to go?

8) The intern problem:  This issue is a relative of the Too Little problem. An organization hires a summer intern, who is tasked with building a community within Facebook or Twitter.  They may be successful, but what happens when the intern goes back to school? The community flounders, and the organization appears unresponsive.

9) Silly QR codes:  These are the small squares that appear almost everywhere, but almost no one uses.  Or rather, rarely uses.  What is most surprising is seeing QR codes in places where a user can not possibly access the underlying web page: subways, remote geographies, etc.

10) No internal Social Media risk policy: While you may want those in our organization to help amplify your message through social channels, what happens when your name is used within a user’s profile, and that profile contains inappropriate content?  Building a Social Media risk policy and guidelines, and then training your staff on it can solve problems before they start.

11) Facebook Social Graph:  This is the search function that is available within Facebook.  Used creatively, it can open your organization up to significant embarrassment.  Consider a search such as “People who work at Coke who like Pepsi”.  While it is impossible to protect your organization against every eventuality, developing some basic tests makes sense.  Good engagement is desirable; bad engagement isn’t.

12) Ignoring opinions:  While you may know that books are rated on Amazon, and hotels are rated on TripAdvisor, you may not be aware that ratings sites exist for every single type of organization or function:  Teachers, Portfolio managers, Accountants, even Funeral Directors.  You have four choices with these sites: ignore, monitor, respond, or build your own venue for comments.  (Hint: ignore is not a good option.)

13) Active User Disengagement:  Even more than email, Social Media is a permission-based activity.  Slamming users into Facebook groups (which generates email notifications) will agitate them at best – and drive negative opinion on Social Media.  (It may also be contrary to certain jurisdiction’s Anti-spam laws.)

14) Automatic posts:  While there certainly is a role for automatic posts, when the organization is in a time of crisis, all digital channels must be managed strategically.  Automation can quickly take engagement in the wrong direction.  This will become more problematic as the use of “bots” to autorespond become even more prevalent.

15) Non-strategic engagement:  Digital engagement must be part of an overall plan.  Engagement initiatives that develop conversation for conversation’s sake – or on inappropriate topics – are counter-productive.

16) Stop shouting:  Engagement doesn’t mean a series of broadcast pronouncements, or warmed-over advertorials.  It means conversation and the development of a community of interest that benefits all parties.

17) Stop experimenting (mostly):  Many digital challenges have already been solved, so rather than spending time and resources solving them anew, use models to shortcut the process.  One model is Three Tiers of Social Media, which describes a social media continuum from Passive, to Broadcast, to Engagement.

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