What to avoid while building, promoting, and maintaining your brand online.
Your organization could have a beautifully designed website and advertising campaign, but if you’ve been neglecting your Facebook presence, or aren’t up to date with the latest features, you’re missing big opportunities to engage a large part of your customer base.
Below are some common marketing and advertising mistakes to avoid on Facebook.
- Too many impersonal advertising posts
Having an overabundance of promotional articles and ads spamming your followers’ newsfeeds is impersonal and often unattractive to viewers, losing your target audience. Your content must be engaging for your users so that they continue to follow your account.
For this reason, mold your marketing strategy around the 80/20 rule of social networks. This means that 80% of posts should offer valuable and entertaining content, and 20% are about brand advertising.
Put a face to the name of your business, and post more photos of people in the office, success stories, workplace events, and outings.
- Not knowing your audience
Facebook originated as a platform where folks connected with their friends and family. Since then, it has evolved into the online yellow pages. Understanding your target market’s habits on Facebook can better position you to develop organic content around their interests, so make sure your content is engaging for someone scrolling through to see the latest updates and relevant information. Some posts regarding your business’s statistics and industry jargon may be better suited for peers and followers on LinkedIn, who may be more likely to understand and engage with that content.
- Irregular content scheduling
Maintaining your online presence requires posting with some regularity to stay relevant. Posting every day for one month and then disappearing the next will cost you. Users will forget about the brand, and fewer new subscribers will see the page in the feed. Therefore, your content strategy should include regular posts so that your profile remains active and attracts new subscribers (once to twice a day, every other day, five times a week, etc.).
- Having an incomplete profile
Your Facebook page and overall online presence is often the first introduction potential customers have to your brand. Do not neglect the opportunity to interact with followers and attract new ones by having an incomplete profile that people cannot obtain information from.
Use a unique profile picture and cover photo that sets your business apart, and make sure that the URL of the page matches the name of your company.
For consistency, your handles should be the same across all your social media platforms. This aids in recognition and distinguishes your company from others with similar names. Correctly indicate the business category so that the profile is displayed when searching for your services and fill out the “about” and “contact” tabs with clear and up-to-date information so people can conveniently reach you.
- Not using calls to action
Make sure to always add a call to action for users to interact with your content.
- “Learn More”
- “Sign Up”
- “Shop Now”
- “Subscribe”
Seeing this prompt points out a clear direction for your followers. Another way to accomplish this is by asking a question and including solution-based language in your post copy.
For example:
Want to learn more? Listen to our podcast episode: Meeting Your Social Media Mark.
