The last few weeks we’ve looked at the 10 Twitter and LinkedIn Mistakes That Businesses Make Daily
And now it’s the turn of Facebook – and this is a big blog – because more and more I’m hearing tales from businesses that they’re actually using Facebook less than they did a year ago due to dropping reach
This needn’t be the case – if you need any more inspiration, just 2 days before I wrote this blog one our clients pages reached an audience of 24,000 people on an organic (non-paid) post
Facebook still works if you’re doing it right
Read the 10 Facebook Mistakes That Businesses Make Daily
1. Only Posting Sales Messages
Have you ever read one of those free “magazines” that are around 80% adverts and 20% content and thought never again?
That’s what the general public think of Facebook pages that only ever post sales messages and Facebook themselves realise that
You’ll notice that pages that only sell regardless of the number of likes they have on them have relatively low engagement on them
And you’ll notice from your own page updates – the posts that get the biggest reaction on them are the ones that are sentimental, funny, thought provoking
It’s still possibly to position your brand through these types of Facebook updates and the reach of them is likely to be far bigger than a sales messages
After all – any post directly selling facebook really wants you to pay for as they’re a business as well
2. Posting At The Wrong Time
Timing is everything on Social Media
Think how much is being posted on Facebook every day by friends, family and other businesses
Now thing about your customer base whether they be B2B or B2C
It’s your job as a marketer to be working on Social Media for a significant period of your day – but joe public jumps on to social media when they have a spare moment outside work
You are marketing into people’s spare moments and for most pages their fans are active at lunchtimes and in the evening – but as with everything the timing can change within the hour so being laser focused is important
3. Only Posting One Type of Content
We live in a world of short form text, long form text, graphics and photos, video content, audio content
Your Facebook Page should be content rich and not just be the same type of content on repeat
Think of the different ways you can tell your narrative
Think what is the most appropriate way to display this micro moment?
Think outside the contradictory news articles on which content performs best and focus on what performs best on your page
Are you telling your story to appeal to the different ways people consume content?
4. Hard Sell Inbox Messages
We manage Social Media for a lot of local businesses so we know when a business is in hard sell mode
An spam message ends up in 1 page followed minutes later with the copy and paste to another dozen local pages
Unsolicited sales messages to Facebook pages may be lucky once in a while – but they turn off far more people than they impressive
We’ve talked before about Rapport – build the rapport 1st and the sales will come if you have the skills
Sell in the 1st message and you often turn people off for life
5. Spamming Unrelated Sale Messages On Comments
We’ve all been there – you post a really great post on Facebook, lots of people are commenting … and then there’s that moment
Bobs Painters and Decorators or a MLM scheme posts a totally unrelated sales messages in the comments
It feels like a cheap trick because it is
Don’t do it – Don’t Be the Company going for the cheap quick win, because it’s the fastest way to lose
6. Using Facebook Groups To Broadcast Rather Than Contribute
Facebook groups can be massively important tools as part of your facebook marketing
But they’re only as useful as the people using them
We run a local group and had to set rules that businesses were only allowed to post one advert per month as the group was becoming a spam fest
It worked and in just a couple of months the group has become a real community with discussions which people contribute to and help others
Does it work for business? Well yes – people win business every from it – but do it without selling
Givers Gain
7. Not using View Pages Feed On Your Facebook Page
Just before I proceed – please you all are liking other business pages with your page aren’t you?
If you are go on to the desktop version of Facebook, head to your business page and just on the left hand side of the page under how many people like your page is a option called View Pages Feed
You can dip into that each day and engage with other business pages posts from your page
Visibility, engagement and relationship building all come from this
And what comes after those 3 things – sales!!
8. Never Posting About Business On Your Personal Profile
If you run your own business, work is a big part of your life
And you know what it’s ok to post occasionally on your personal facebook profile about the great things you do
95% of posts on my personal facebook profile are about music, TV, local restaurants I’ve visited, charity work I do, interesting news stories – the sort of things that most people share
Only around 5% of my personal facebook posts about work
But those 5% of posts are my highlights of what I do for my business and those posts alone in the past week alone have generated 2 rather big meetings
If you never speak about what you do on your own facebook – your friends and family will go to your competitors and then use the phrase “Oh, I Didn’t realise you did that”
9. Not considering Facebook Paid Advertising
Pay to Play on Social Media is becoming more and more common place
And with the world giving away their private information for free on Facebook, the advertising platform is a dream for marketers
Unlike local newspaper advertising where you’d spend hundreds hoping that a small percentage of their readership might be your targeted customers, on Facebook Advertising you can pay as little as £5 a day to rich highly target customers based on a range of demographics and interests
Because Facebook has been free and effective for so long – businesses are resisting the paid model
But it’s all about ROI – if you spend £5-50 on Facebook advertising to your target market – what ROI could that deliver?
10. Giving Up On Facebook Because Of Facebook Organic Reach Dropping
There’s a famous quote by Henry Ford – “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.”
If you feel Facebook reach is dropping for your page – the answer is not to stop posting all together
But look at everything we’ve said above to increase the quality of your posts, make it more human and watch the reach increase
Think organic reach isn’t possible – a post for our client reached 24,000 by organic reach alone and quarter vs quarter Facebook reach has increased for them
WANT TO CHAT ABOUT MARKETING THAT WORKS?
If you want to chat to us about an effective marketing plan for your business
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
