Are you guilty of the most common Facebook business page mistakes?
In my time working with business owners to improve their results on Facebook, I have come across many areas where they can make significant improvement. In this article, I share the 10 most common mistakes that business owners make on their Facebook business pages. So, let’s dive straight in.
1) Too Many Sales Posts
I know you are not using Facebook for the fun of it, and the ultimate goal is to increase traffic to your website or sales, but constantly ramming your products or service down your followers throats will only irritate them and eventually, cause them to unlike your page. They have followed your page as they are interested in your industry and what you have to say, so give them so ‘Gold Nuggets’ to help them, not just sell your wares. Direct sales posts should account for no more than 20% of your overall content. There are many other ways to sell your business to them like testimonials and helpful tips, so keep your ‘selling’ to a minimum. Give the follower a chance to know, like and trust you with other great content.
2) Inconsistency
I often see businesses post 3 or 4 times in a couple of days and then NOTHING for 2 weeks or even months! Whether you are posting every day (which I highly recommend) or only a couple of days a week, KEEP IT CONSISTENT. A great example of this is when I was recently doing interviews with ethical businesses. I saw a great company that was listed in the top 25 sustainable list. However, when I looked at their Facebook page, nothing had been posted in over a year. My first thought was that they were no longer in business. Do you want potential customers thinking this of your business?
3) Cross Posting Across Social Media Platforms
A big ‘No No’ in social media is to cross post across different social media platforms. What do I mean? When you create a post on one platform and it automatically posts it on others. Common ones for this is Instagram to Facebook and Facebook to Twitter.
Every platform has a different audience and restrictions. Apart from looking lazy to visitors, it can truncate part of your message if you have written a long post. For example, Facebook gives you a maximum character count of 63,206, whereas Twitter is only 280. Therefore, if you have written a long post on Facebook, Twitter will not show the full post. Also, Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags on a post and it is recommended to use at least 5-10 to increase reach. Whereas, Facebook doesn’t use hashtags as much, and it is recommended to only use 1-2 per post.
Most importantly is the message itself. As I said before, each platform has a different audience and even if you want to share the same content across all, the message should be written with the relevant audience in mind.
4) Focusing On Fan Count Instead Of Engagement
Many business owners think the important metric to measure is how many followers they have. There are advantages to having a larger following (as long as they are ideal clients), especially on Facebook, as the more followers you have, the more metrics that are available in Facebook Insights.
However, it is far more important to concentrate on engagement. Facebook’s mission is to ‘create meaningful conversations’ and therefore, having a smaller following of people who interact with your content increases the reach of your posts. Also, building relationships with your followers helps to increase the know, like and trust factor which will make them far more likely to buy from you in the future. What is the point of having 10,000 followers that do not interact at all with your content?
5) No Clear Goals Or Measurements
Nobody wants to put in a lot of time and effort and sometimes expense without getting something out of it. However, I have seen business owners posting for the sake of posting, without any clear goals or a way to measure them.
Every post, action and message should be in line with your ‘WHY’, keeping you on brand. To truly understand the value of your efforts you should be clear about what you want to achieve and how you will measure the success. Whether it is sign ups to a free download, visits to your website or just interaction from potential customers.
6) Forgetting Your WHY
As I said in the previous point, every post, action and message should be in line with your ‘WHY’. If you have the right audience following you, they are likely to have chosen you over your competitors because of your WHY. Why are you doing what you do? What are you passionate about? What difference do you want to make? Sharing this with your audience helps them to relate to you and connect on a deeper level.
55% of consumers GLOBALLY say they are willing to pay more for products and services provided by companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact, so share your activities with your followers and let them be part of the journey.
7) No Variety Of Content
As well as sharing too many sales posts, business owners are sometimes guilty of sharing the same type of posts constantly on their Facebook pages. Imagine you are following a page. How would you feel if it was the same content all the time? You need to add variety to your page to keep your followers entertained, inspired and educated. Have a good mix of engaging and trust building posts.
8) Ignoring The Followers’ Desires
I understand you want to share certain content on your page but is this what your followers want to see? If you are not paying attention to things they like, you are unlikely to get any interaction. If you have done your research on your ideal customer, you will know what their interests are and what pushes their emotional buttons, so use this knowledge to create great content that they want to comment on and share. This will increase your reach and give you a great opportunity to start conversations and build relationships.
9) No Story-Telling
The art of story-telling has become a major part of social media activity. Taking your followers on a journey and letting them into your world helps them to relate to you and be a part of the action. Your story is how your business will be remembered by followers in the midst of competition. Tell visitors why you started your business. Share the difference you are making and include them in any important milestones or changes.
10) Ignoring The Importance Of Social Media
Many business owners know they SHOULD be on social media and create a page with the occasional post, but they don’t necessarily understand quite how influential social media is in the modern world. 35% of customers are more likely to buy from a company with an active social media presence. This can have a massive impact on your sales.
In addition, people like to tell the world about any complaints they have and what better platform than Facebook. Facebook has become equivalent to your Customer Service desk as people will post issues and ask questions about your product or service. On the flip side, it is a great platform for happy customers to leave reviews for all to see, giving you the opportunity to show the world how much you care about your customers and gain new ones too.
How many of these mistakes is your business making? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least one or two. However, now you know what to avoid.
Are you making the most of Facebook for your business?
If you are struggling with content ideas, feeling overwhelmed with the constant changes or need someone to guide you and hold you accountable to ensure every minute spent on Facebook with effective, then check out our Facebook Kick Starter Membership Academy.
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This is Suzii, signing out ’til next time. Have a great day everyone!
