10 Things Not to Do on Facebook When Posting as Your Brand

facebook-updates

Let’s discuss a little bit about posting as a brand on Facebook. There are many examples of brands messing up on social media and you don’t want to be one of them. Think: Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro ( https://www.facebook.com/amysbakingco ). Look it up to see what happened with them. Essentially, they’re a fabulous example of what not to do.

9-no-slashDon’t Argue & Defend — So you get a poster who is complaining about you, your product or both, and you feel hurt and defensive. This is not the time to post an argumentative post back to the person, putting them in their place. It’s okay to admit mistakes and it’s okay to delete obvious spam, but it’s never okay to be rude, no matter how bad your feelings are hurt.

Don’t Post Only a Link — Everything you post should have a blurb about what you’re sharing, or posting. Whether it’s an image, a video, sharing other people’s content, or your own blog posts — always post a tease about it, plus don’t forget an obvious call to action. If you don’t ask your readers to share, follow, buy, or like, they probably won’t.

Don’t Automate Too Much — This might seem like a time saver, but in reality it’s pretty much a waste of time to automate too much. While all kind of apps and plugins exist to help you with these tasks (some mentioned in this report) it’s really not helpful to post the same thing to Facebook as you do Twitter. They are very different systems. Also the way EdgeRank works is that automatic status updates are relegated to wherever posts go that don’t wind up in newsfeeds.

Don’t Post Only Text — Images and Video get more love, that’s just a fact of both the EdgeRank system and human nature. Humans love video and images more than plain text. It adds interest to the page and gets fans curious to look further. Plus when someone who has not liked your page sees this as shared from a friend, they’ll be prompted to like your page.

Don’t be a Control Freak — It’s okay sometimes to let others take care of some choices for you. For instance, you can let your audience choose your next product title, the features of the product and more by posting a poll asking for their opinions or posting a link to a voting page. Offer incentives for participation.

Don’t Skip Days — It’s understandable if you get sick, or something like that happens, but it’s imperative that you keep a consistent pattern to your updates to guarantee maximum exposure and engagement. If you have a plan, and it’s only taking you 10 minutes a day there won’t be may excuses to not seeing it through. When you need to be absent use a scheduling feature or outsource it.

Don’t Ignore Comments — When people take the time to comment on a page, or share something, it’s nice to make a comment back, or “like” their share. They’ll see that you did that through notifications and appreciate that you noticed and do more of it in the future. Making people feel special will always win them over.

Don’t Post Too Much — Posting a continuous stream of stuff can actually cause your fans to be turned off. Try working your way up to three posts a day by starting with just one per day. Consider your target audience as to when the right time to post your updates are. Each audience is unique.

Don’t be Irrelevant — You have a target audience, and you have a niche. Stick to that niche and make each posted update fit into that niche. Don’t try to go outside of your area of expertise or you’ll create confusion amongst your target audience. Be relevant and post only useful, valuable and targeted information on your Facebook page.

Don’t Ignore Metrics — It’s imperative that you know whether what you’re doing is affecting your goals or not. There is no point wasting time doing things that are not seeing the results you want. If you don’t study the metrics you will be shooting in the dark without benefit of night vision.

Not only should you avoid these actions when posting as your brand, if you’ve connected your personal profile to your business page, be very careful about what you post there too. People can get offended very easily.