Having a Facebook page for your business is free and simple to create. As such, many small businesses are creating these pages but yielding poor results. Facebook mistakes in business, such as not having a fan page, spamming people, auto publishing posts, and not interacting with others, will derail your social media campaign. The following are 4 of the most common Facebook mistakes people make, and tips on how you can avoid making these costly Facebook mistakes for your business.
Facebook Mistakes | Not separating personal from business
The most common of the Facebook mistakes that most new businesses make is the failure to create a Fan page for business; instead opting to use their personal page as a business page. Your friends don’t want to see your business feeds, and some of your personal feeds that come up shouldn’t be shown to potential customers. The last thing a financial adviser’s page needs while trying to establish credibility is a picture of his college days downing a beer bong while wearing a sombrero and bunny slippers showing up. Avoid Facebook mistakes for business by separating your personal page from your business page. If you’ve already made this mistake, it’s not too late to fix! You can still convert your Facebook page to a business fan page in a couple of minutes.
Facebook Mistakes | Spamming
Social media is not your father’s Yellow Pages. One of the more common Facebook mistakes social media newbies make is broadcasting their message like a newspaper ad. These types of Facebook mistakes will cause your ‘friends’ to hide your feed, thus making your Facebook and social media presence useless. Rather than advertising your product or service, provide valuable content related to your industry. If your promoting a healthy weight loss product, write articles pertaining to healthy lifestyles, exercise tips, or other areas related to your product, that provide valuable information. Then, when you’ve established credibility and people visit your site, they’ll be ready to make a decision. Finally, don’t be afraid to mix up your messaging style on Facebook. Put out an article, then a video, then pics, etc… Facebook mistakes, like broadcasting your message or just posting blogs, can turn people off your site quickly.
Facebook Mistakes | Auto-publishing
As mentioned as one of the Facebook mistakes above, simply putting out blogs or articles multiple times per day will turn off your friends and cause people to hide your feeds. Therefore, it’s important not to turn on auto-publishing tools on your website. WordPress, for example, has several plug-ins that will allow all of your blogs to auto-publish on all your social media sites. However, it may be best to only put a blog on your Facebook site every 2-3 days. Therefore, to avoid Facebook mistakes, turn off your auto-publishing functions on your website, and, as stated earlier, mix up your messaging with pictures and videos as well.
Facebook Mistakes | Taking the ‘social’ out of networking
Social media is a two way communication mistakes, and companies making the common Facebook mistakes of treating their social networking site like a static website find that they are not driving traffic to their site. Once you commit to utilizing Facebook in your social media plan, you must utilize it daily. This strategy doesn’t even mean putting up posts. It simply means interacting with others on your page. For example, if someone leaves a comment on your page, leave a reply. If another person ‘likes’ an article or video, then go to their page and ‘like’ something, or leave a message. The more you interact with others, the more they will interact with you.
Facebook Mistakes | Conclusion
In summary, creating a Facebook page for business can be a profitable and relatively simplistic way to market your product or service. However, if you make the aforementioned Facebook mistakes that other businesses have made, then you probably will not have much success with your marketing endeavors.
