Top 10 Facebook Mistakes

 

Facebook

As the largest social media website in the world, Facebook is an important tool for marketers and businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re looking to build a multi-million dollar brand or generate more sales for your startup company, Facebook can help.

Marketing on Facebook is very different than marketing on TV, on radio or through PPC advertising. In fact, it’s very different than just about any other marketing medium on the planet.

Many marketers who come into Facebook with mindsets that work in other industries end up shooting themselves in the foot. Working with Facebook users is not like working with other audiences!

Here are the top 10 Facebook marketing mistakes that people tend to make, along with how to avoid them.

 

Mistake #1: Posting Too Often

Facebook is not Twitter. People often lump “social media” into one big bucket, but these networks are really quite different from one another. One important distinction is post frequency.

On Twitter, it’s normal for people to post 10, 20 or even 30 or more tweets a day. That’s how the community works. That’s the pace of the action. That’s what’s accepted and expected by the community.

That’s not how it works on Facebook. If you post that often, you’ll be perceived as spamming. Very few of your messages will end up on people’s feeds anyway, which means you’ll have wasted a lot of time.

The ideal post frequency for most people is about 1 or 2 updates a day. If you have a very active audience, you can go up to 4 or 5 updates a day as a general rule of thumb.

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Mistake #2: Deleting Negative Comments

This is a huge nono. Facebook users value their freedom to speak. If you squelch that freedom by deleting negative comments, you’ll have an uproar.

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Companies who’ve done this in the past have often been surprised by the backlash. In many cases, those who were silenced ended up creating their own Facebook pages dedicated to bashing the company. They posted negative remarks to their whole social network, which got a lot of shares.

If you delete negative comments, they will simply resurface elsewhere. It might be on another page, it might be on their status update, it might even be on a consumer watch website like RipOffReport.

It’s far, far better to contain the damage by just limiting the exposure to the people on your page. Mitigate the damage by responding intelligently to comments. Don’t delete things, but face them head on. You’ll gain respect instead of losing it.

 

Mistake #3: Not Actively Participating

Most big brands make this mistake. Just take a look at a big brand’s fan page feed: How often are they responding? Are they actively participating? Probably not. However, big brands don’t need to create community. McDonalds is not looking to create a McDonald’s community online. That’s why they can get away with it.

As a small business however, your goal should be to connect with as many of your followers as possible. You want to nurture goodwill, nurture the relationship and spur more discussion. The only way to do this is through active participation.

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When someone posts a comment, respond to it. When someone asks a question, answer it. If someone makes a complaint publically, respond publically with an explanation or an apology. If someone posts something valuable, say thank you.

Participate. The more you participate, the more likely others are to get involved as well.

Mistake #4: Not Reading Facebook’s Contest Rules

If you’re going to run a contest on Facebook, you should read the rules. Then read them again. Then read them again. Facebook has many rules about how you can and can’t run contests on their sites. Violating even just one of these rules is enough to get your contest and possibly even your whole page shut down.

Many of the contest rules are counter intuitive. For example, you can’t actually announce a winner on your Facebook page. Another rule is that you can’t use Facebook to contact them. The list of rules goes on and on.

Facebook is a fantastic platform to run a contest on. However, if you want to use the platform, you must be willing to play by their rules. Read the rules at: http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php#promotionsguidelines

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Mistake #5: Vanilla-Only Facebook Updates

If you’re only posting one type of content all the time, you’re going to bore your audience. Vanilla all the time is no fun, so add a little excitement. Fan pages that only post text status updates or only link to written articles often have a hard time keeping their audience engaged.

Instead, post a variety of content. Here are just some of the many different types of content you can post:

  • Text status updates
  • Links to audio interviews.
  • Links to articles and blog content.
  • Infographics and other graphical content.
  • Flash product demonstrations.
  • Videos and slide show presentations.
  • Software, web software and other tools.

The idea is to mix things up so people are constantly exposed to something new through you feed.

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Mistake #6: Sending Promotions via Private Message

This is a huge mistake that Facebook users make. Marketers might do this because they actually genuinely think their product is so good that it warrants private messaging, or they might just be desperate for the sale. Whatever the reason, no matter how good it seems to you, don’t do it.

Private messaging on Facebook should be reserved for real friends only. Sending commercial messages on Facebook messages is viewed as even lower than email spam.

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If you post high quality content that your followers click on, Facebook will prioritize your status updates so it shows up more often in your followers’ feeds. This is the best way to reach your followers. Don’t overstep the bounds between commercial and personal, or you’ll jeopardize your relationships and even your fan page.

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Mistake #7: Never Sharing Other People’s Content

It’s a pretty natural inclination to want your content to be the only content you share on your feed. Unfortunately, that’s often not what creates the best customer experience. You aren’t always going to be the first one to create content on a topic. You won’t always be able to create the best resource on a topic.

When someone else beats you to the punch, you have the choice of either ignoring it or sharing it with your fan base. By sharing it with your fan base, you give them something valuable. You help them solve a problem. You build goodwill.

It may not feel as good to the ego to share someone else’s content, but if you’re truly looking out for your followers, often times sharing someone else’s content is what you have to do.

Aim to put out as much high quality content as you can, but always share any outside pieces of content that you think would help.

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Mistake #8: Not Having a Complete and Well Designed Page & Profile

Facebook’s timeline and covers allow you to create a highly customized look on both your Facebook profile and your Facebook pages. If you’re still using the standard Facebook look, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to build your credibility and your brand.

You should have a highly professional and great looking Facebook cover for both your Facebook fan page as well as for your personal profile.

What if you aren’t a great designer? No problem – You can have someone do a design for you for under $100.

Likewise, make sure you have a professional looking photo. If you want to go the extra mile, look for some way to add some interaction between your profile photo and your timeline cover photo.

In addition to having a great profile picture and cover photo, make sure your fan page is filled out completely. For example, if you run a restaurant, make sure your opening times, your website, your address and your online menu are all linked to from the page.

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Mistake #9: Not Using Facebook Insights

Metrics are an important part of any marketing campaign. You need to keep track of exactly how much resources you’re putting into your campaign and what kind of results you’re getting out of it. Facebook marketing is no different.

Facebook’s insights give you a lot of valuable data that you can use to determine how well your campaign is doing. Your raw fan count is not the only important number to look at.

Through Facebook insights, you can also figure out how many friends of your fans saw your content. You can see how many people are talking about your posts. You can see how many people interacted with your post in any way – Whether it’s a share, a comment or a like.

You can use Facebook insights in real time. This allows you to do things like promote a post or pin a post and watch as your Facebook influence rises or falls to see exactly how much impact various efforts have.

Get to know Facebook insights. When it comes to Facebook marketing, it can be your best friend.

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Mistake #10: Obsession with Likes

Facebook marketers tend to focus too much on the number of likes they get. The more likes you have the better you appear to be. This really isn’t the case at all.

It’s entirely possible for a Facebook fan page with 5,000 followers to bring in more revenue than a Facebook fan page with 50,000 or even 500,000 followers. It’s not just follower count that matters.

Other factors you should pay attention to include:

  • How often do your fans share your content?
  • How often do fans come back to your fan page?
  • How many of your fans do you know in person?
  • How many would buy a product if you recommended it?
  • What’s your virality %?
  • How many of your fans are also on your email list?

So on and so forth. The quality of your fan base is every bit as important, and often more important, than the number of fans you have.

Paying attention to getting more fans is a good thing, but don’t neglect investing in the quality of your fan base.

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These are ten of the most common mistakes people make on Facebook. When done right, Facebook marketing can help you spread your message, bring more people in the loop, build your brand and drive revenues. Avoid these mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to a successful Facebook campaign.

 

 

1 thought on “Top 10 Facebook Mistakes”

  1. Great post. Thank you for your insight.

    Personally, I don’t like to use the terms “followers” or “fans.” I call them “friends” and work at forming relationships to sell my books.

    Reply

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