There is no denying that Facebook can be a very valuable marketing tool for many businesses. With the ability to share your content, communicate and engage with your community, and highly target prospective customers and clients with their advertising platform, it is a marketing powerhouse. Unless, of course, you are making one of these seven Facebook marketing mistakes that every small business should avoid.
Starting a business page on Facebook takes only a few minutes – upload a cover photo, write some posts, and invite friends to ‘like’ your Facebook page. Well, that is the simple part.
The ultimate aim of Facebook marketing is to reach potential customers and build an affinity with existing ones. With more than two billion Facebook users, you would think that garnering a fan following of a few hundred for a Facebook page would not be that difficult. But it is… and many business owners struggle with marketing themselves on Facebook effectively.
Creating an engaged audience of fans on your Facebook page is not rocket science. It does, however, require a commitment to creating quality content and an understanding of how to communicate with your target audience.
If you want your Facebook marketing efforts to pay off, you must avoid these common Facebook marketing mistakes that many growing businesses tend to make.
Before you spend another second on your Facebook business page, take a look at these seven mistakes that you want to avoid.
Most people use Facebook to connect with friends and family. So to create interest in your business page, you must communicate like a ‘person’ rather than a company. Instead of impersonal posts, write Facebook posts which show the human side of your business. For example, share employee stories, or upload photos/videos of your workplace and customers. You could host a Facebook Live session, where you talk about your products, and your experiences as a small business owner.
A Facebook page is not another platform for blatant business promotion. Your target audience will follow your Facebook page or share a post only if they find the content to be engaging, relevant, informative, or empowering in some way.
For instance, sharing figures about the impressive growth in your customer base may seem like an apt post for LinkedIn, but on Facebook, convey the information as, “Our sales last month have been higher than ever before. Thanks for all your support in helping our business grow”. Include a photo of your staff holding a ‘thank you’ banner.
What do most of your Facebook posts look like? Are they mostly text posts accompanied by stock photography images, or links to articles?
Facebook posts that tend to be more popular contain videos, an element of humor, high-quality visuals, contest announcements, or informative infographics. Publish a combination of these post types.
Also, you can create weekly content themes. For instance, if you sell clothes your weekly content plan could be – Week 1 – Educate the customer about the latest fashion trends; Week 2 – Share details of an upcoming exhibition; Week 3 – Photos of customers wearing your garments; and Week 4 – Create a series of DIY fashion accessories.
Use the information available under ‘Insights’ tab of your Facebook page, to assess which type of posts resonate with your audience. Also, see how customer engagement varies with the time at which you publish posts. According to a CoSchedule study, Facebook posts published between 1 and 3 p.m., and between Thursday and Sunday tend to perform better.
If you publish thirty posts over a month and then don’t publish for the next two weeks, that is bad for your Facebook page. Building a following on any social media page takes time and effort. When you post fresh content, it tells the visitor that your Facebook page is active, which increases the likelihood of them following the page.
Publishing posts once a day, or even publishing every other day should be fine, as long as you do so consistently. A word of caution – don’t post too often as your fans may get fed up of seeing your business name pop up in their news feed. However, there are events when posting more often than normal may be more acceptable; for instance, when you run a customer promotion, or when you share live updates from an event.
It takes only a few seconds for a first-time visitor to form an impression of your Facebook page, which will influence any further action they may take. Here are a few things you can do to create the right first impression with your target audience:
Have you ever promoted a well-performing Facebook post? It makes sense to spend some of your marketing dollars on promoting Facebook posts that are newsworthy, informative, or have received a higher number of likes/ shares. While creating a sponsored post, you can specify the demographic features of your target viewer, the daily budget for promotion, and for how many days you want to run the post.
Word of caution – use the paid-for approach to increase your fan count sparingly. Ultimately, your content must do the job for you.
What are the goals for your Facebook page? Is it to drive sales, to generate traffic to your website, or is it a platform to build awareness of your business?
Many small business owners feel that Facebook does not work for their business, but that is because they have not defined what they want to achieve or how they intend to achieve it. For instance, if you want to garner 100 new fans in a month, you need to think about the type of content you will publish. If you want to generate sales from Facebook, you need to measure the inbound leads.
These Facebook marketing tips are not cast in stone. You must assess what works for your business and what doesn’t. The bottom line is, rather than focusing on building the number of fans, use your Facebook page to build a community of people who share the same interests. Once you do that, the numbers should follow.
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