Facebook can’t be that hard, right? Your mom certainly seems to be figuring it out. Mom might even make an excellent community manager—if her brand’s community wanted to see pictures from your fifth birthday party. Thankfully, your brand’s audience wants more than your embarrassment. So, what exactly do they want? Well, as the social media manager managing your brand’s Facebook account, you’ll have to experiment to figure that out. But we can tell you what they don’t want.
Avoid these 8 Facebook mistakes to ensure your brand’s likability:
1. Winging It
That’s right: You need a plan. And no, your plan can’t be just to have a Facebook page for the sake of having one. Your page needs to serve a purpose and you need to have a real goal in mind. Are you going to use your page to build brand awareness? Will you use it for an extension of customer service? Are you using it to connect with fans? You must decide on your direction and then tailor your posts for that reason.
2. Making Facebook Mad
One way to definitely fail at managing a Facebook community would be to have your content deleted by Facebook itself. You have to play by the rules.
Facebook has strict rules regarding brand pages and it is your responsibility to know them. One recent update that we’ve seen become a problem for brands is the 20% rule. Profile images, cover images and promoted image content cannot contain more than 20% text. If you violate this rule, your image is sure to be rejected or taken down.
Not sure if your cover photo has too much text? Check out this handy tool to test whether your image adheres to the 20% text rule.
3. You. Never. Stop. Talking
Have you ever had a conversation with someone where you couldn’t get a word in? You learned all about their life but they didn’t ask you one question about yours. Annoying, isn’t it? One-sided conversations are the worst—online and off. There is a big difference between talking to your fans and talking at them. Interact with your community by asking and replying to questions. Listening and reacting is the only way to step out from the noise and be part of the conversation.
Engaging is now easier with Facebook’s new reply feature, which allows you to reply directly to comments left on your page and start conversation threads. Plus, the most active conversations among your audience now appear at the top of the posts ensuring that people who visit your page will see the best conversations. This also makes your replies stand out more, which is helpful in showing just how much your brand is engaging with its audience.
4. Being Shady or Lazy
In addition to interacting with your community you also have to monitor them. And by monitoring we don’t mean deleting every post you don’t like. Negative feedback will happen whether you like it or not. Acknowledge the negative rather than cover it up. Deleting negative comments will only further enrage the angry posters and will make you look sneaky.
What you are allowed to delete is spam or anything that you find inappropriate. It is important to establish a moderation policy that makes it clear to your audience what is acceptable on your page and what is not. uberVU’s page points out what types of posts we would remove from our page—things like “hateful remarks or threats against countries, ethnicities or other groups of people.”
Make sure to check your page and comments regularly so spam or inappropriate posts don’t get out of control. An overload of spam on a company page shows just how little the brand is using it. And who wants to follow a company who is not present and actively engaged?
5. Looking Like a Dictionary
So. Much. Text. Facebook is visual so don’t bore your audience with text-heavy posts. Trust us, no one goes on Facebook for a nice, long read. Add some fun to your content with bright, vivid images. They will be sure to catch people’s eyes and draw them into your page.
Posting images is now even more important with regards to Facebook’s recent changes to the news feed. After realizing that 50% of news feed content was images, Facebook’s new feed now focuses on making those images stand out even more. This means that long text posts will be easily lost in the shuffle.
Start to think about new ways to tell your stories. Add images where appropriate, but do not add an image for the sake of adding an image. It should be relevant to the content and ideally add value.
6. Tweet Assault
Your tweets aren’t invited to the Facebook party. Why? Because Twitter and Facebook are two very different networks. Twitter is fast paced and high-volume which means you can tweet twenty times a day and no one will blink. Facebook is much more personal and relaxed. Fans do not expect (or want) to read your daily posts plus twenty tweets every day.
Because the networks are so different, the content you provide on each should differ as well. Your fans on Facebook expect different things from you than your followers on Twitter. So please, do NOT auto-publish your tweets onto Facebook. If your fans wanted to read each and every one of your tweets, they would follow you on Twitter.
7. “Like” Abuse
“Like this if you don’t kick puppies.” We’ve all seen these kinds of posts (and probably “Liked” them out of sheer guilt). But did these “Likes” result in any real worth for the original posters?
Likes and Shares are important. The more people that “Like” or share your posts, the more people the message is reaching. But is that message enhancing your brand? The amount of “Likes” won’t matter if the message has no value. Emotionally manipulating your fans into sharing or liking a post will not gain you meaningful exposure or engagement.
If you’re posting interesting content that’s right for your brand, the right fans will share it, which means it is more likely to reach your intended audience. Fans who genuinely like your content will promote it because they want to, not because you’re guilting them into sharing it.
8. Being Boring or Annoying
Forget your paycheck for a moment. Would you like your page?
Think of your Facebook page as an extension of your brand. The page is not there just to reiterate everything on your website but rather to provide additional, exclusive content. This means offering your fans something they won’t be able to get anywhere else. Perhaps it’s a behind-the-scenes look at your company or tips for using your product. Mix it up and keep it fun.
What this exclusive content shouldn’t be is a constant sales pitch. Using your page to only repurpose sales messages is more likely to annoy than actually work. Try to keep promotional messages to a 10% minimum. The remaining 90% should be valuable content that your audience wants—both original content and other’s content you choose to share.
Need help with Twitter, too? Check out our 7 Common Twitter Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
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