When I speak to groups or am interviewed about Facebook, I am often asked to provide examples of companies that are “doing it right.” With well north of 500 million users who spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, companies are increasingly interested in how Facebook can be leveraged as part of their marketing campaigns. It’s only natural. Many companies jump in and set up a Facebook Page but aren’t really sure where to go from there. There is no strategy. No goals. No content calendar. Nada. The Facebook Page has been created and viola, all is done. Throw the Facebook logo on your marketing materials and everyone will flock to the Page. While you and I know this isn’t true, this is a consistent issue and one that I’ve run into more times than I can count.
As with any aspect of your marketing, if not done with thoughtfulness and some planning, just setting up your Facebook Page could become disastrous, frustrating and lead to abandoning something that could be a powerful way to build and connect with your community. Over the past couple years of working with clients when I was at New Marketing Labs, researching and writing my book and being an active user on Facebook, I have put together the 9 deadly sins of Facebook Pages (and their administrators). There surely are many other “sins” and many, if not all of them, apply to other social networks as well.
9 Deadly Sins of Facebook Pages and Their Administrators
Not having any goals
One of these days we will be able to stop talking about the need for goals in social media but so many companies are still just jumping in without knowing why they are doing it and what success looks like for them. You need to have goals. Whatever they may be, whatever success looks like for you, you must have goals. It could be that you want to gain 25 “likes” so you can get your custom URL. You could want your Facebook Page to become a top 10 referrer of traffic to your website. It doesn’t matter what the goal is, it matters that you have goals and a timeline for achievement.
Thinking it’s about YOU
It’s never about you. It’s never been about you. Make it about your community and you’ll find that you will reap far more benefits. It’s really that simple.
Page abandonment
I’m just as guilty of this as the next person managing Facebook Pages. It’s very easy to set up a Page, get all excited about it and then not touch for week’s on end. Not only are you missing out on opportunities to engage with your community on a platform where they’re spending an average of 55 minutes per day, you’re also hurting yourself with increasing your chances of appearing in your fans newsfeeds. If you’ve never read about the EdgeRank algorithm and how Facebook decides what appears in the newsfeed, stop reading this and go read this excellent article by TheNextWeb.
Acting like a robot
This is another one of those face palm moments that I have when I see a brand automating their content to Facebook. Twitter and Facebook are two separate platforms. Treat them as such. Do not post your tweets automatically to Facebook as status updates. Take the time to actually engage on Facebook. Create custom content that’s specific for your Facebook community.
Lack of engagement
If your community is taking time out of their schedule to engage with the content that you’re creating on Facebook, you can take the time to engage with them. Sure, every single comment or like doesn’t have to be responded to and sometimes you will have people there just trying to pick an argument with you or your company. You also don’t need to run down a list of comments with “Great, thanks” type comments. Use your best judgment and take the time to be thoughtful in your responses.
Inconsistency
This is the step prior to complete page abandonment. If you’re inconsistent with creating content and engaging in Facebook, then you can’t expect to have an active community. Not only will it hurt your EdgeRank from a technical perspective, your community won’t be used to the rate at which you produce content. You won’t be one of their “must check” Pages just like if you’re not active on your blog or other platforms, they will quickly move on there, as well.
Giving up too quickly
Just because there are 500 million people on Facebook doesn’t mean that within 3 days of launching your Facebook Page you will be reaching Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber levels. Success on Facebook is just like most other aspects of life: it takes hard and sustained work. You will not be cashing bonus checks a week after launching your Facebook Page just because you launched your Facebook Page.
Using too many tabs
Just because you can create multiple customized tabs doesn’t mean you should. Your Facebook Page is not your website, just on Facebook. If your Facebook Page strategy includes 18 custom tabs, slap yourself. Having a custom landing tab for your Facebook Page is an excellent way to carry brand consistency and to engage with your community as soon as they hit your Page. Having other content on another tab that may be relevant if they choose to “like” your Page can be useful to them. But, too many tabs and they will be confused, turned off and annoyed…the ninth deadly sin.
Annoying your fans
Just as you shouldn’t be inconsistent in your rate of posting content to your Facebook Page, you also shouldn’t post so much content that you annoy your fans. The fact that they clicked the “like” button doesn’t mean that they’re telling you “pummel me with updates and messages.” The fact that you can message your fans doesn’t mean that you should do it so much that it becomes annoying to you. Multiple times I have un-liked a Page or un-friended someone for too frequent of updates. This is your community and it can be a vibrant and successful community if you nurture them well. Always remember that.
There you have it, these are the 9 deadly sins of Facebook Pages. What are other “sins” that you see on the Facebook Pages that you visit?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk
![Subscribe to [justinrlevy.com]](http://justinrlevy.com/images/icon_rss-20.jpg){kind=icon}
![Sign up for the [justinrlevy.com] Newsletter](http://justinrlevy.com/images/email-icon-20.jpg){kind=icon}
Are Blog Comments Dead?
As engagement and sharing on Twitter, Facebook and other social tools continues to increase, many bloggers are noticing a sharp decrease in comments on their blogs. Of course, that doesn’t mean that interest is declining. RSS and email subscriptions, site traffic and social sharing may all be continuing to increase. These are tracked through a variety of tools and even popular commenting system Disqus scours social networks to find blog posts being shared and displays those as “interactions”.
Increasingly bloggers are concerned that even though they know that their posts are being shared through other channels, that their communities still aren’t commenting on their posts. It’s a completely understandable feeling. You work hard at putting together a thought or position, flesh it out, find an engaging photo or video to help enhance your point and then publish it to the world. A comment makes us feel good and/or helps to extend the post itself. Sometimes the comments are even better than the post. So, when a blogger begins noticing a decrease of comments on their blog, it can be depressing. It can cause bloggers to start rethinking their content strategy and possibly even considering whether or not they should continue blogging.
Every time I’ve been asked whether or not a blogger should be discouraged by a decrease in comments, I immediately ask them whether or not they’ve looked at the sharing of their post through other channels and what the feedback from those channels are. Usually they tell me that their seeing their content being shared online but they still wish they were getting the comments on their blog.
I’ve been thinking about this often. Admittedly, I comment a lot less than I used but I share tons more now. Google Reader trends tell me that I share around 30 articles per day through there. I also regularly share tons more through Twitter and Facebook throughout the day. But, I probably comment on about 75% less blogs than a year or so ago. I know, I need to improve on that.
However, as I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve been considering whether or not the decline in commenting is actually a bad thing. If you stop by and comment on a blog, you may extend that conversation and/or let that blogger know that you appreciate their work. Both are great. Consider though that the conversation will only be seen by that community which is limited by the number of subscribers and the number of visitors to that blog. But, if you share that blog post with your community on Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, then you’re promoting that content to your social graph thus extending the total overall reach of that post. By sharing that post with your social graph, it will extend the number of eyes that may be seeing that blog for the very first time. Or, if they’ve ignored other content from that blog, it may be that post that pulls them in and triggers them to subscribe or share it with their networks thus continuing to grow the overall subscriber base and reach of the blog.
You may think that I’m suggesting that comments are dead but I’m not. I love comments as much as the next blogger. I appreciate everyone that takes the time out to share their thoughts. I also value everyone that shares my content with their social graphs because it helps to get my content out to more people.
It’s just something I’ve been debating in my own head lately so I figured I’d spill it out into a blog post and see what you had to say and where you may choose to say it. So, what are your thoughts? Do you prefer comments, social sharing or a combination of both as a measure of the engagement on your blog?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Photo Credit: premasagar