Hey Private Practice Heroes! Are you ready to talk about some social media crap today??
Cause’ here’s the thing … the last thing any business owner needs in today’s world is crap – and yet many of us let a ton of crap pervade our social media accounts.
Why?
Often it’s because it’s easier to let things be versus getting rid of the crap.
Partly because it’s tricky figuring out how to fix it and partly because it just takes up time that you don’t have.
Sometimes, it’s because you don’t often realize that these kinds of issues are even a problem.
But that will change today!
I’m going to share with you what some of the top issues are, why they can be a problem and how you can make some easy fixes!
And yes, there’s an easy fix for many of these issues, and if you can take a few minutes on the regular, it will help you in the long run.
Now, I mentioned that most folks don’t realize there is a problem – that some of these issues are nothing more than an annoyance, when in fact they can be working against your marketing efforts. And sometimes they can be opening the doors for your family to get caught in fraud scams and no one wants that!
Some of those fraud stats are scary!
In 2022, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre received fraud and cybercrime reports totaling a $530 million in victim losses. This was almost a 40% increase from the totals in 2021 – $380 million.
Even scarier, the increase wasn’t even connected to an increase in reporting—because the Centre estimates that only 5 to 10% of people report fraud. Many people get tricked and are ashamed to tell people.
This is why it’s important to deal with some of these issues – even when you don’t feel a lot of this stuff is worth dealing with, but it really is.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
We all know there’s algorithms out there that do affect what we see in our feeds and who sees the content too. The systems like Instagram and Facebook all use those algorithms to control the content and its reach.
They also use algorithms to match the activities of followers to the content. It’s why when you start engaging with a particular post in your feed based on a certain topic, you then start seeing more content on that topic.
Trust me… you start watching bear videos on Facebook and soon all they start feeding you in the feed is more bear videos!
You need to understand who follows you, who you follow and who you engage with and what – makes a difference in the results from the algorithm.
So our Issue #1 is Fake Followers on Instagram.
With Instagram, this can be a real problem. I see more here than on Facebook for sure.
Fake followers – sometimes referred to as Ghost followers – on your Instagram profile are easily recognizable because they’re often people whose profile shows images of someone who most people assume is trustworthy.
Often they’ll have BIOs that say they are a doctor or a general in the military or some high-level military rank like that. There’s going to be a few posts and images in their feed, not very many – and they’ll show them in uniform. They think we all assume those roles mean they can be trusted.
Probably some of the Instagram posts will be with a dog or a cat and often someone on vacation standing in front of recognizable places things. Many have them with kids … again, to show they can be trusted. What you’ll notice is that they haven’t posted very many things and if you check their followers and the people they’re following the ratio is way off. Some will be private accounts too but that’s not always a giveaway.
The big giveaway is they’ll be following lots more people than they have following them back and the reason is because they’re fake accounts.
Now, I know a few of these could slip in that might be real, but honestly, there are not many of these that you see with these same profiles and traits on the account that are going to be real.
So why are fake followers an issue?
They work against the algorithm with you. Because their activity is not real.
They might make your number of followers go up, but they’re not going to interact with you and anything they do is not going to be worthwhile so it ends up working against you with that algorithm.
They also put any percentage calculations in the algorithm off. Things like the rate of engagement from followers reduces because with fake followers, there are more people not engaging.
That’s why it’s important to deal with them. You need to get rid of them to remove them as a follower. This keeps your followers to real people who can really engage.
Check your IG notifications whenever you logon. Look for the new followers, review their names, pics, it takes under 7 seconds to do this for each fake follower. (Yeah, I did just time myself).
This is one of the Daily 7 Live networking activities I teach folks in the Thrive Marketing Academy – You should always check your notifications and new follows and deal with the crap ones and acknowledge the real ones.
7 seconds to fix the issue is time well spent.
And a PRO TIP – if you plan to add this to your list of Daily 7, take some time to clean up your followers first and get rid of as many of the fake ones as possible. This makes it much easier to manage over time.
Issue #2 is Fake Facebook Profiles or Spoofed YOUs!
A real problem of late is finding out your friends have been getting friend requests from someone that looks like you – but is actually a fake account.
Now to be clear here – you have not been hacked. Someone has made a fake account of you – complete with your profile picture and even a few posts that are duplicates of your own! It’s so real, and people don’t always remember if they were your friend or not so they accept those requests. And the Spammer has tricked your friends into friending them.
Now the biggest issue here is there have been tons of people who’ve fallen for this and then they get private messages from their family saying they are in trouble and need money – and those loyal family members are sending money to help.
Those buggers are smart and savvy. And they will try anything… I am so happy we talk to my Mom about situations like this so she knows when to be aware.
She actually received a phone call a few months back, and the person on the other end sounded like my oldest son. The person said things like Hey Gramma it’s your oldest grandson… and not sharing his name. She thought it sounded off and did not play into their hand and when she realized it was not quite right – she hung up. But that is how easy it is.
And when your friends list is open to the public, anyone can search through and try to find out info about you or your friends that can be used against you to try and trick you or worse your friends into some scam or another.
The first thing to do about this is to be aware of friend requests.
If a friend sends you a request – someone you thought was already a friend, then check it first before accepting the request.
Here’s how you check it:
- Click the name of the friend from the request – but do NOT hit accept! This takes you to their profile on Facebook
- The profile has a URL – we all have one. Check what the url shows as their name. For instance, mine is https://www.facebook.com/kathycolaiacovo
- Then go to your friends list and check for your friend you already thought was there.
- If they are – click on their picture and visit their profile and look at the URL – I 100% guarantee you will see these two URLs are different. That’s your confirmation the friend request is from a fake profile.
- Then you can go back to the friend request fake profile and by their name there is a place to report them as a fake profile and Facebook will even prompt you to click through and choose what friend of yours they are pretending to be.
- This action generally is enough to fix the issue.
- Then you want to visit your friend’s profile and send them a message someone is pretending to be them and sending friend requests. I like to do this as a post on their profile not a private message so that other friends see it too. In the post I encourage them to report it as well.
Just the other day my middle son sent a friend request on Facebook. I texted him to be sure – which had him laughing but it was my way of checking.
Always check before you accept a friend request from someone you thought you were friends with already.
I know this sounds a little confusing so I will make a quick video to walk you through how to check these URLs and friend requests, you can get access to that on my shownotes page for this episode at marketingyourprivatepractice.com/44.
There are some things you can do to help prevent this as much as possible to protect yourself and your friends from these scammers.
FIX NUMBER ONE – Always take a minute and check and report the fake profile and post an update on your Facebook telling people to do the same. And ask them to unfriend the person too. Typically by the time anyone tries that the fake profile has been closed. Facebook is pretty on top of these.
FIX NUMBER TWO – You can reduce the chances of this happening by tightening up your own Facebook privacy and security settings. What many people don’t know is that if your security settings on Facebook are not very secure and your profile is open to everyone – you make this easier for those spammers to do.
If the general public can see your Friends list and your content then that means the scammers can look at your list of friends and once they open the fake profile of you, they start going thru your list and sending friend requests.
Fixing this issue only takes a few minutes and then you have locked things up so that strangers, people NOT your friends cannot see anything more than your profile images and maybe some of the pages you like and groups you belong to.
Go to your privacy settings on Facebook and lock down the privacy and limit your content to friends only. You should also limit who can see your friends list to friends only as well. This protects those friends from the scammers too. And it makes it harder for anyone to create those fake profiles and connect with your friends.
As a bonus, you also should ensure that your email, phone and private info like full date of birth are private to you only.
Issue # 3 is Spam Comments on Instagram and Facebook posts.
These comments are so annoying, especially on Instagram – oh my, these drive me batty.
A lot of them on Instagram, you’ll see as “promote it on XXX” and XXX is another username or website.
Sometimes there were more than one comment and all the exact same comments from different profiles and they’re all just saying the same thing. Promote it on XXX whatever Instagram account they’re trying to get them to go to and promote.
They do this to get more followers but those comments are putting engagement up on your posts but from not ideal followers… so it hurts more than it helps of you leave it there – you want real comments, not fake ones.
Plus these can scare the real folks say from commenting cause they are worried about the spam.
On Facebook, they tend to be ones that post how they made lots of money with someone’s help and they share website or username links too. Sometimes they get posted as reviews on your facebook page, so always check that spot too. The other common type on Facebook is that sly Fake Male profile, where they apologize for jumping in on the post, but that “You look so beautiful they just had to stop and post and see if you needed a friend” … ugh so gross!
Why are these comments an issue? It just doesn’t help to leave them there and as I mentioned earlier, the problem is people think it’s complicated to deal with, but once you know how to deal with these, it’s easy to clean it up too!
All you have to do is delete or report the comments. It doesn’t take long to do it at all. Not when you know what you’re looking for.
This is something I do when I go to go online on my social media channels for my networking to engage with people time. It’s the first thing I do before I start any of the networking and engaging – I’ll check the notifications for comments and check them out and bam – delete or report.
All done and then I move on to what I’m really there for to connect and engage with my online community!
Alright — those are the top 3 issues that you will run into with your social media channels – issues that can work against your marketing efforts or issues that can put your friends and family at risk.
Your action steps from this lesson!
- Stop ignoring the spam comments, and fake followers.
- Decide if you need a cleanup of the past comments and followers or not.
- Add time to your live networking time – you know that 15 minutes when you go online to connect and engage with people – and make one of your actions to be dealing with the fake followers and comments to keep them under control.
- Check your Facebook privacy settings and lock things down so the entire world cannot see all your info and your friends list too.
- Then, when you do login to Facebook and see those friend requests from people you thought were your friends. Stop, check the real friend out first and if it’s a duplicate then take a moment to delete or report or unfollow!
Let me know how it goes! These simple steps will keep your social media accounts clean of spam and fake followers helps protect your family and friends too.
Because if you want to Thrive in Practice, you want to know what your marketing time is helping you and that you are not putting your family and friends at risk. No one wants their Mom getting calls from scammers and being part of those startling stats of being defrauded in an online scheme. These 5 action steps will help you and your friends safe and secure!
And be sure to share this episode with your friends and family too – the more we are educated on what to look for the more we can all fight the fraudsters together!
I’ll see you next time!
Resources mentioned:
- Book a Free Marketing Audit with Kathy C
- Ep 1 – Is marketing your private practice in 15 minutes a day possible?
- Got Questions? DM Kathy on Instagram.