Mistakes Businesses are Making on Facebook

Starting strong and dying off after 3-6

months leaving behind a ghost town.

This is one of the most common mistakes I see on Facebook pages. Businesses start out strong. They post great content and mix it up. They see some engagement and a small but consistent growth but then they give up. Typically this happens about 3-6 months into their Facebook strategy.

The most common reasons businesses abandon their Facebook page efforts include:

• No direct leads or sales • Stalled growth or engagement • Not enough time to manage the page and look for content

Facebook marketing takes time, consistency and a budget. Remember it looks worse to have a ghost town than to have nothing at all.

Over promotion - It’s all about me me me

Let’s quickly talk about Facebook reach:

When you post something to your Facebook page Facebook lets it go out to about 1% of your audience as kind of a test group. If that test group responds to your post it goes out to more people and so on. If the post is not received well (no one interacts with it via clicks, likes, shares or comments) the reach stops.

So what does this have to do with over promotion?

I have yet to meet anyone who likes being sold to. So when you only post promotions and all about you content on your page people are less likely to interact with it. This, in the end, kills your reach both now and in the long run. You need to be sharing content that people want to see. Create value, build trust and grow a community of fans!

Buying likes/fans

Remember how we just talked about Facebook

reach? Yeah this is why you don’t buy likes/fans.

Buying fans might boost your numbers in terms of fan count but it will kill your reach over all. And why in the world would you want people who do not care about your content, your business, your services and your products liking your page? Especially at the expense of your real fans?

Posting links with no context.

Why post a link at all if you are not going to explain why anyone should even take a further look? Don’t

let your audience try to guess why the article or link is important to them, give them an explanation and

wet their appetite for wanting more. Universal truth: people won’t take the time if you don’t.

Using your profile as a business page.

You will not use your personal timeline primarily for your own commercial gain, and will use a Facebook Page for such purposes.

Via Facebook’s TOS

While it is okay to post business content on occasion on your personal profile, it is NOT okay to utilize your personal profile as if it were a page. This means you should not create a profile under your company name and you should not use a

profile for the primary purpose of doing business and marketing. This is in direct violation of Facebook’s terms of service and are grounds to have your

profile disabled without notice.

P.S. Your family and friends do not need to see non stop promotions from you. That is just rude.

Ignoring customer comments, questions and complains.

According to a study by Sprout Social: Retailers failed to respond to more than 80% of consumer questions and requests on social media in the last year. (In 2014)

According to a report by Aspect Software 76% of consumers look at customer service as a test of their value to a brand.

According to a report by Hootsuite and Zendesk: unanswered questions on a company’s social media page would deter 50% of people from being its customer.

Research shows that ignoring comments, questions and concerns on Facebook (and other social networks) will

only hurt your bottom line.

Inconsistent posting strategy

Posting once in a blue moon is not going to help your business in any way. You need to be consistent. Whether you want to post several times

per day or several times per week, you need to stay consistent and always be checking your page insights to see what the best days, times

and content to post.

Boosting post that people don’t even care about.

Remember that discussion about Facebook reach that we talked about. Well if your reach is already low on a post then why

waste money trying to boost it to get more people to ignore it? Talk about throwing money way. Instead focus on boosting content that seems to be grabbing the attention of your

audience and just need a little “boost” to keep that traction going. If you REALLY want to get content out that is not doing

so well (ahem promotional content) you should not be boosting but rather looking into targeted ads and dark posts.

Not having a budget.

Okay it is tough love time…

If you are feeling like Facebook has been a waste of your time. If you have not seen any new traffic or leads from your efforts and if you are ready to give up, I want to ask you one question…What is your ad budget? If

your answer is zero then you have no reason to be upset. Social media is not free my friends. You pay for it in time, effort and ad money. If you really want to get customers you need to spend money just like any other marketing media you have ever used. By the way, how is that

$2000 ad in the yellow pages treating you?

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