Apr 1, 2013

Facebook No-Nos for Small Business

Whether or not you like it, making your small business present and active on Facebook is no longer optional. It’s a necessary part of your company’s social media strategy, which is surely a crucial part of your overall marketing endeavors. But knowing you need to be on Facebook, and actually knowing how to exist on Facebook (successfully, without making your company look bad) are two different things. Are there special rules for business pages as opposed to personal profiles? Indeed there are. Here’s a quick rundown of things to not do on Facebook:

Liking your own posts
- Hey, there’s nothing wrong with standing behind the content you post. Clearly, you should. But actually Liking your own posts looks…a little sad. A little lonely. Like you have no friends. And that’s not good branding in any industry.

Having a personal page
- Yes, this still happens. You can obviously have a personal profile, but your small business needs its own separate business page. There is nothing that makes a company appear more out of touch with the Facebook world than looking them up and finding that, instead of having a business page full of information that can be easily Liked and thus followed, they have a personal profile. For their business. Which must be friended before engagement can occur. And trust us – very few people will go through the trouble of adding your company as a friend. Most will decide you don’t know what you’re doing and probably aren’t worth the trouble anyway.

Ignoring comments
- You got a comment! Awesome! Don’t ignore it! Love it, respond to it, especially if it’s the kind of comment the truly begs a response, like a question or critical remark. Clearly, if you’re getting hundreds or thousands of comments on posts, you don’t have time to respond to every single one (and you would probably look a little insane if you tried to), but you can still make timely interjections into an already booming conversation, just to show your company is paying attention, and has something worthwhile to contribute. But hey, if you’re getting that many comments, you’re clearly doing pretty much everything else right, so good job.

Not deleting spam
- Spam happens, plain and simple. Make sure to scan your page daily to make sure that no one is trying to tap into your base of followers for their own evil purposes (Fact: spammers are evil.)

Not fostering conversation
- Facebook is not kidding when it comes to user engagement. Getting your visitors to comment on your posts is a critically important part of successful Facebook use for businesses. If enough time goes by without a healthy amount of good engagement, Facebook will really just stop including your posts in people’s news feeds. How do you make sure your creating a hospitable atmosphere for conversation? Don’t just use your page as a platform for issuing statements, or sharing press releases. Post interesting industry-relevant content, including videos, photos, and other share-worthy items. Ask questions, request feedback. Actually dig into discussions with followers. All of these are good ways to breathe necessary life into your page.

Not staying updated
- Facebook, like many social media platforms, undergoes changes and updates fairly regularly. It’s very much a part of your marketing gig to stay on top of these changes, and adjusting your profile/methods of engagement accordingly. For instance, put up a damn cover photo! It’s pretty not-so-new at this point. Also included here: mind your page insights, which give valuable data about how people are utilizing and interacting with your page and posts.

Not completing profile
- When customers – or even more importantly, potential customers – reach your Facebook page, they expect to be presented with all the information they need about your company: where it’s located (physically and online), how to get in touch (phone, email, carrier pigeon, etc.), your hours of operation, where else you have a presence online (Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) All of it. Having a bare-bones profile not only underserves your customers and clients, but makes it appear that you don’t really engage very much on Facebook. And if you don’t, there’s no reason for visitors to do so.