10 Facebook Page Don'ts - Articles

So many businesses these days create a Facebook page as a means of marketing themselves. Done correctly, we all know that this can be a very effective tool. But get it wrong and you could find yourself in a spot of bother. Check out our tips of things not to do on your company’s Facebook page.

1. Don’t Boast – no one likes a show off! Spouting out constant sales lines about your products or services is not going to attract any attention, will not engage your followers and may even annoy them enough to ‘unlike’ you. The occasional self-promotion is okay but remember that Facebook pages are not about the hard sell, they are about nurturing quality relationships with your customers and potential customers in the long term.

2. Don’t Ignore Negative Feedback – learn to take the rough with the smooth. By creating a company page, you are allowing your customers and potential customers an open platform to provide feedback, both positive and negative. Learning to respond to this feedback is critical. Respond in the wrong way and your company’s reputation could be significantly damaged. Make sure you think hard before responding, ensure your responses are constructive and above all, avoid entering into tit-for-tat.

3. Don’t Forget to Proofread – a typo or spelling mistake can be pretty embarrassing so make sure you proofread all posts before submitting.

4. Don’t Neglect your Page – make sure you post regularly to keep your followers interested and engaged. Neither should you bombard your followers. If in doubt, a once-a-day post is a good general rule of thumb.

5. Don’t Get Stuck in a Rut – as they say ‘variety is the spice of life’ so keep your posts varied. Remember to mix text with images, videos, and links. Visual content is far more likely to engage your followers. Statistic: images get 120% more engagement than text alone (Source: Facebook for Business).

6. Don’t Neglect the Basics – ensure your profile and cover photos are up-to-date as well as the ‘About’ section. Be sure to include a concise and well-written overview of your company as well as contact information and a link to your website.

7. Don’t Ignore your ‘Insights’ – monitor them and learn from them. Facebook has recently improved the ‘Insights’ function for Pages so take advantage. Look at which types of post most and least engage your followers and modify your activity accordingly.

8. Don’t Post a Link without a Description – your followers need to know why they should click through. This is a pretty common mistake on Facebook Pages but really is basic. To not do this looks pretty lazy and you are likely to find that very few people will click on your link. A well-worded concise description is far more likely to attract interest and get people clicking.

9. Don’t Always Link to your own Website – link to lots of other interesting, but related, sites as well. Your followers will appreciate this more and will look to you as a source of links to information they are interested in.

10. Don’t Forget to Offer Something Exclusive – most people ‘like’ companies and brands on Facebook because they feel that by doing so, they will be getting something extra. Remember to reward your followers with exclusive offers, news, information and competitions – not only will this keep your current followers happy, it will also encourage others to ‘like’ your page.

Remember to never underestimate the power of Facebook – use your Page to its full potential and the benefits could be huge.

Posted on 30th July 2013 by Stuart in Social Media