Facebook

10 Facebook Marketing Mistakes Brands Make

Facebook is the largest social channel for brands to use for marketing. It reaches the widest age range and has over 1.71 billion monthly active users! Add in Facebook’s other property, Instagram and we’re talking to another 500 million monthly active users. Facebook Marketing should be a focus in your brand’s social media marketing strategy.

Facebook drives to most social traffic to websites. It is most likely responsible for the majority of your brand’s social sales. Take the time out to audit your social media strategy to understand how effective it is. Learn how to measure the ROI of each of your marketing tactics individually. Understand how social media plays into your marketing funnel During your strategy review, find out of you are making any of these Facebook marketing mistakes. Although this checklist targets Facebook organic (free) posts, much of it applies to other social media channels and paid social media posts as well.

10 Facebook Marketing Mistakes Brands Make

Posting on Facebook Inconsistently

– Just like blog posts, videos, and email marketing, your social media audience expects to hear from you on a regular basis. An ideal schedule might include one daily post or it may be only three times per week. Whatever the schedule is, make it regular and consistent. It is tough enough to break through the Facebook algorithm but if your users know when they should be looking for new posts, they will be sure to check in and look for new content or promos!

Not Scheduling Faceook Posts

– Even the social media novice knows that social media posting can be time consuming and distracting. Your social media presence is an important part of your marketing strategy. However, it can take time away from the other duties the person responsible for posting the content has. Your social media manger has to develop content ahead of schedule and respond to follower questions and comments. If your manager has to stop what they are doing to head over to Facebook to post, other parts of the process may be dropped. It is much more efficient to schedule posts via Facebook’s native scheduler (don’t use services – we will talk about why not another time!) This way social media mangers can set aside regular time to schedule posts and respond to followers’ comments.

Trying to Sell in Every Post

– A good social media strategy includes mixing your own products or serve as with other content your followers are interested in and find useful. For example, a moving company certainly wants to post about their services and promotions but they also should mix in content that is helpful to their audience. A good mix could include posts about packing techniques, renters’ insurance, real estate information in regions the mover serves, etc.… All of this information is relevant and helpful, yet does not compete with the main service offered. Not every post should be sales oriented! Informative content helps to build a following as well! Your audience will come to you as a resource. And yes, it will help you sell because your audience will perceive your brand as genuine and sincerely interested.

Not Using the Right Sized Images

– One of my talks is about optimizing images for social media sharing. It truly is a critical aspect of posting on any social media channel. Facebook images for posts should be large enough (1000px x 1000px is a good start) so when users click on them for a close up view, they can see the details on your product shot or graphic. It is annoying to click on small images only to get another small image. As with all social media channels, Facebook image sizes involve more that the posts. Be sure to use the right sized images for Facebook profile and cover photos. Grainy photos and images blocked by text on the page make your brand look bad! There are no restrictions on how much text you can use in Facebook cover photos – be sure to utilize the entire space and make no text is blocked by other elements on the page.

Forgetting the call-to-action

– We don’t want to sell in every post, but when we do sell, we want the call-to-action to be clear. An old adage is marketing says to ask for the sales three times. Images, text and the buttons in paid ads all give brands multiple chances to issue a clear call-to-action. Tell users what you want them do; “Visit our website,” “like our page,” “call now,” or “click here.”

Leaving Out a Link in Posts

– This is closely related to forgetting the call-to-action. If you want readers to buy your products or read a blog post, you must include a link if you want users to go to another website, sign up for your email list, read a post from a website, etc.… Seems obvious, right? Links are often broken or left out altogether. This is even more common on Pinterest, but it happens on Facebook quite a bit. Obviously, in an Instagram post, this is irrelevant. Do not make your users hunt around or work to get to your brand’s landing page– make the user experience easy!

Ignoring Facebook Insights and Analytics

– Facebook offers data about your followers. Look at your page’s Facebook Insights to see what time of day your audience is active. Post during those times. Be sure to look at the engagement that past posts earned to determine what content resonates best with your audience.

Buying Followers

– Do NOT buy followers! Also don’t purchase likes, hearts, retweets or any other kind of social engagement on any social channel! I bash this practice every chance I get. Yes, buying social media followers inflate a Facebook page’s numbers and make it look popular. The faulty is logic is that if a page looks popular via its large number of followers, then others will be more likely to follow. This practice does not bring what a brand really needs: website traffic and sales! An inflated number of followers does not get a post through the Facebook algorithm. Take the high road and build a real Facebook following by posting engaging content that your target audiences enjoys.

Not Boosting Popular Content

– One savvy way to get more engagement, increase your Facebook followers, and get more website traffic is to boost popular organic posts. Boosting Facebook post to a target audience helps get more reach for your creative at a lower price point than an ad. Review past Facebook page posts and choose one that was popular as an organic post. A Facebook post that was resonated well with your audience will most likely be popular as a boosted post or pad social media ad. To save money, narrow down the audience before putting money behind it.

Not Being Social

– The fundamental idea behind social media is to be social. Many brands schedule posts and leave them on autopilot and never looking back. Being social means responding to users’ comments and actually engaging with time. It may also mean the brand attends live events and posts those on social as well. The basic tenets of social media mean being social. I’ve had more than brand not understand that when a live event applies to them (they are a sponsor) they should have a live physical presence and include it as part of their social media strategy.