One of my jobs is to critique Facebook Pages to ensure they’re effective for the business and interesting for the consumers. Here’s a few common mistakes I saw last week:

1. No reply to Messages or Posts
If people are interacting with your Page, that’s a good thing. If they see it as a legitimate place to give feedback, that’s a good thing. If you’re using Facebook as a business or an organisation then you must respond to people when they Message, Post or Comment on your Page.

2. The About section isn’t set up correctly
Is one of your objectives to drive people to your website? Then make sure your web address is visible. To your store? Then add your address. Simple stuff but people often get it wrong.

3. Using paragraph style
When you’re Posting on Facebook, you don’t need to hit Enter twice at the end of a paragraph. Two reasons: one is it looks weird on Facebook to see all this unutilised space, and two, it doesn’t work well for Newsfeed or mobile because you’ll often have to click “Read More”. And who has time to make an extra click these days? Write less.

4. Generally quite a lot of text
As above. Write less. 3 lines max is a good rule.

5. Posting too often
A general rule of thumb we use is to tell people to post 3-4 times a week (although obviously depends on your industry). Two reasons: one, you’re not that interesting. Don’t spam people’s Newsfeeds. Two, and slightly more complicated is that you’re fighting against Facebook’s complex algorithm that decides how many people actually see your Posts. For more info on this bit either google “Facebook Edgerank” or else ask me to explain in the comments area below.

6. There are too many questions on the posts
“What did you do?” “What’s your fave?” etc where the Page admin is trying too hard to illicit responses. Just focus on what people like at first (images), then ask for Likes. Questions are too hard until the ‘community’ is built.

7. Always posting about You or Your Product
Align with other interests and make your Page interesting to your fans. It doesn’t have to be about ‘You’ all the time.

It often seems like organisations are trying to play a short game in a long game environment. You just need to relax a bit and post good content. Everything else will fall into place.

Enjoy yourselves,

Jon

2 comments so far

  1. Vicki Smith,

    Just a query. I was recommended by Rocket Spark to make contact with you. I want to grow my social media online side of my business. How can I do this? I have only touched on this since I took over my business two years ago and I see the importance of this for sure. I look forward to your contact with me.
    Vicki
    More than Flowers
    Rototuna Retail Centre
    Cnr horsham downs & thomas rds
    Hamilton
    http://www.morethanflowers.co.nz

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