In every Facebook fan page campaign; there are three phases that go together like the 3 Musketeers – the group of sword fighting men, not the candy bar. Those three phases are planning, design, and execution. Even in the most carefully planned and designed Facebook fan page, the execution is the place where most people fall flat in gaining and maintaining an audience of customers. In fact, when executed incorrectly, a Facebook fan page can have your nearest and dearest friends avoiding you in the supermarket!
Most people don’t make these mistakes on purpose (although there are a FEW that I have kindly noted the mistake and then UN-LIKED when they persisted). These are usually the people who see me out at dinner and tell me that their Facebook fans have dropped over the last month. I shake my head sadly…knowing the answer is probably one of these five mistakes that will turn LIKE into DISLIKE on Facebook:
1-Tag Lightly – Never Hit Too Hard. In every Facebook class, we discuss the ways to tag other people and Facebook pages to draw traffic to your own Facebook page. Sometimes, without understanding the effect, people over-tag certain Facebook pages or people in an effort to get attention (or just because they don’t understand the result!). Every time you tag someone or a Facebook fan page, it posts your content on their page. Even with the best of intentions if done too often or in too many places, it is tag-spam (the equivalent of email spam!).
- Example: During a recent social media party, we allowed all of our Facebook fans to post a link to their Facebook fan page to get the community connected. We asked in return that the posters go to each other’s Facebook fan pages, LIKE their page (to build fans), and leave a hello from the visitor. One person took this to heart! She went to all 87 pages that participated and tagged our Facebook fan page as the referrer. Her posts showed up 87 times on our Facebook fan page! We had to delete them as they went down for pages and pages of 87 link-backs from the tags!
2-Trespass Posting. Most people start off their Facebook fan page by leaving their promotions, introductions, and offers on other peoples Facebook page. This is the equivalent of someone coming to your website or place of business to put posters up all over. Unless you are specifically invited to post your content, work to get involved in the Facebook fan page that you are visiting instead of creating a hit-and-run approach. As you comment and interact with LIKEers from other Facebook fan pages, they will start to follow you home to see what you do!
- Example: When you LIKE a Facebook fan page, write comments that makes sense and lead people to talk to you. Instead of saying, “I agree / disagree” to a post, engage with the poster and their audience in discussing whatever issue is of interest are on that page.
3-Posting Parade. When you are invited to post on someone else’s Facebook fan page, follow their rules (read them twice – no sense posting if it gets deleted!) and do not use your promotional materials to take over the page. Most people understand that keeping the post to a simple word count of about 150 words with a link (if requested) is completely satisfactory to interest others and promote a brand. If you use large pictures or long verbiage of text, then the owner of the Facebook page is likely to delete your post and readers probably won’t LIKE your page because you will be “that person” that rambles on!
- Example: Frequently, Magic Marketing USA will conduct a Social Media party and invite all fans to leave their link under a comment in a posting response with a quick promo / introductory sentence about their page. Some people post directly on our wall with large 4 inch vertical banners that promote their company like a neon sign! One or two of these types of posts and our posting is well out of sight for visitors. As the company that owns the Facebook page and invited others to come post (remember our guidelines are well set!), it’s like getting bullied out of your own house!!
4-Update Spam. Part of the benefit of owning a successful Facebook fan page is the ability to update – or email – all of your fans at once. In the way that giving someone your phone number or email address gives them permission to contact you, the same is true of a Facebook fan page update in the administration part of your page. Think about it this way, one of three things will happen if you are not careful with how often you send updates: You will lose fans, you will get reported to Facebook for spam, or people will stop “seeing” your updates because they come so often! Think about how often you update your fans on Facebook and ask yourself, “would I call a customer or email a customer this often?” If not – don’t do it!
- Example: Upon seeing that a local restaurant was sending Facebook updates out almost every day, I connected with them to explain that having to delete their updates from my email, my iPhone, and then from my Facebook email was getting kind of annoying. I suggested they might want to go to a weekly update instead. I was told that their numbers were dropping in their Facebook page, but that was ok with them because it only showed people were not interested – and they would rather have interested people that wanted their Facebook. Plus, I was told to turn off the notices and stay a fan of their page if the notices bothered me! Now really…not only are they losing people (who were interested enough to join in the beginning) from their Facebook page because of their own actions – they wanted to tell me how to adjust my Facebook preferences to condone their bad behaviors. No…I joined the ranks of the un-interested immediately.
5-Mini-Me Syndrome. Most companies start out with Mini-Me syndrome just because they don’t what to post about or where to find content. We suggest to clients that they post in a 3:1 (three interesting things – one business promotion thing) pattern. Remember – Facebook is about a relationship. If you are always talking about your company, your brand, your promotions…why am I interested again? Take time to post polls, facts, quotes, videos, pictures….make it fun and make me want to repeat what you are saying!
Bonus Faux Pas: Letting Grass Grow. This perhaps is the MOST unforgivable. If you let your Facebook fan page go for days without regular updates or do not respond to post comments, then people will move on without even checking back to your fan page (might even assume that you have gone out of business). Keeping people engaged is about talking to them. Would you wait three days to return a business call or email from a client? Facebook is built on real-time connection….don’t wait to communicate with your clients / LIKES here too!
Although most Facebook users are pretty forgiving when it comes to the Facebook learning curve (they have experienced it too!), these are very important DON’T s that will cost you FANs on business pages.
In truth, most people execute a Facebook fan page campaign without remembering the one key element to growing an audience – treat people in your Facebook fan page like they are real human beings instead of numbers.
In fact, Facebook is not a numbers game. If you have 20 people in your Facebook fan page and 15 of those people are actively engaged, then you are successful in your efforts. On the other hand, if you run up to people like a new puppy and try to lick all over them before establishing a petting relationship, they will eliminate you from their Facebook page before you even get started.
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