Facebook fan pages
are useful tools for connecting with your audience on a site they visit each and every day. You can broadcast messages on their Facebook homepage newsfeed, spark conversations that can provide your company with valuable feedback, and encourage fans to upload their own content. But there are some common mistakes that companies make when
using Facebook for business
.
You learned a lot from the 9 Worst Ways to use Twitter for Business , so here are 9 Facebook for business strategies to avoid, as well as how to steer back in the right direction.
1. Duplicate your Twitter Strategy on Facebook
Twitter is another great place to converse with your audience, but it’s a completely different platform, and should be treated as such. Although you’ll want to tweet several times a day to get noticed in people’s overloaded Twitter streams, applying the same frequency to Facebook could annoy your fans and lead to them hiding your updates. Additionally, you don’t want to duplicate the same exact content you use on Twitter for Facebook. Not only will fans following you on both networks notice, but you have much more than 140 characters to work with on Facebook. Take advantage of the extra space! You can even repurpose the same concepts as your tweets; just rework them to fit Facebook.
2. Post Only Plain-Text Status Updates
Just posting standard text updates gets boring after a while. You have several different ways to share content on Facebook . In addition to your standard status update, you can also post links, upload photos, upload videos, or post a question (which non-fans can also see). Just like you’d want to vary the content type in your blog to keep readers interested, mix up the content type on your Facebook page to make your wall look fun and interesting.
3. Don’t Allow Fans to Share Content
Not letting your fans post to your wall defeats half the purpose of having a Facebook page . Not only do you want to share your updates with fans, but you want to allow fans to share their thoughts, opinions, feedback, and even pictures and videos with you. Don’t you want fans sharing pictures of them using your product for the rest of your Facebook audience to see? Or hear what sort of product ideas your fans wish you’d add to your product line? To make sure the share settings are turned on, go to wall settings and make sure all the boxes are checked.
4. Don’t Comment on Your Fans’ Content
If your fans have started posting on your wall and sharing pictures on your page, don’t ignore them. Comment on what they’ve posted, even if it’s just a simple “Thanks for sharing!” or click of the like button. Not only will it encourage them to post even more content, but new fans will see that you care about what your audience has to say, and they’ll start sharing content with you as well.
5. Don’t Share Your Fans’ Content
As someone who works at, well, any business, you’re probably really busy. Coming up with content to post on Facebook and Twitter probably takes up a fair bit of your very valuable time. So why not share some of that user generated content? If someone shares a great photo of your product in action, click the share button and say “Check out this great photo Joe Smith posted!” Not only do fans love other fan photos, but you’ll make Joe Smith awfully happy.
6. Don’t use Facebook Questions to Find More Fans
Facebook recently launched Questions , an application that allows anyone, including Fan Pages, to ask and answer questions from the Facebook community. Just like LinkedIn Answers, Facebook Questions is a great place to establish yourself as an industry knowledge leader. It’s also one of the only ways that pages can go out and reach out to non-fan Facebook members for free, so take advantage of it!
7. Use a Profile Image That has a Poor Thumbnail
When you upload a new profile image, Facebook automatically sizes it down to fit the thumbnail size that appears in users’ news feeds and your wall. On your fan page, your brand’s logo could be cut off in the thumbnail, and this is bad for brand recognition. Here are some fan pages that still haven’t gotten it quite right:
So make sure you get the dimensions of your Facebook profile image right for the thumbnail resize . The Facebook image size will be 200 px wide, so make sure that your desired thumbnail is within a 12 pixel border.
8. Don’t Share Your Facebook Page on Your Website
Don’t keep your Facebook page a secret from your website visitors, who are the people most likely to actually like your page and become a fan. Facebook provides pages with a Facebook like box , formally called a fan box, which you can add to your website so that people can like your page without ever leaving your website. It’s just a matter of copy/pasting a bit of code .
9. Don’t Develop a Personality
Your company Facebook page shouldn’t have a corporate, stuffy tone. Facebook is a place where users go to connect with their friends. They don’t want to go to Facebook to get your sales pitch. You can still maintain a professional presence and have a casual tone. Just take a look at the Starbucks , Coca-Cola , and Skittles Facebook pages; these are three of the top product pages on Facebook, and have established fun yet professional personalities on their pages.
What would be your #10? Let me know in the comments below!
Diana Urban
is the Head of Prospect Marketing at HubSpot.
She is the author of the ebook
Stand Out on Facebook
.
You can follow her on Twitter
@dianaurban
.
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John Smith 8:20 AM on October 21, 2010
Couldn't agree more!!
Jay Ehret 8:49 AM on October 21, 2010
10. Tag other Facebook pages simply so you can appear in their stream.
Liz Karschner 8:56 AM on October 21, 2010
Great Post! Definitely some ideas to take to heart to generate better content. And now off to check out the questions section of Facebook.
Donna Thach 8:57 AM on October 21, 2010
Great article. In my experience, the mistake I see most businesses make is not allowing fans to share content (#3). Most of the time, it is because they fear losing control of their brand if they allow people to talk about the company on its Facebook page.
Another common mistake is that some companies spend too much time talking about themselves rather than sharing relevant, interesting content. I think most of these mistakes happen at companies that have not fully embrace or understand the value of social media.
Shannon Sullivan 9:00 AM on October 21, 2010
10. No Commitment!
Businesses shouldn't set up Pages just to jump on the bandwagon.
They should be passionate about getting involved in social media and excited about developing new relationships and strengthening existing bonds with the community.
Setting up a Page and then letting it be inactive won't help your company. It's like handing out your email address and saying, "Oh, I don't ever check or respond to my messages. But you should still email me anyway!"
Shannon Lowe 9:00 AM on October 21, 2010
#10 - Don't ever do anything to attract fans to your page, especially new fans. Run fun or interesting promotions once in a while to establish reasons to visit and interact with Facebook pages. Promotions or sweepstakes can have a huge impact on your fan base.
khadijah 9:03 AM on October 21, 2010
i like this posting
John Smith 9:09 AM on October 21, 2010
At Fanbooster (a tool for building engaging Facebook tabs for business pages) we always promote the idea of making your page different to your website. I see so many simple duplications of the company home page and it's missing the point completely.
A facebook business page should be the place where you can gauge the reaction of your audience with polls and sweepstakes, video, news that you really want to "push out" to your fans because not everybody checks out the home page every day but we all log into facebook and receive the status updates.
I also think that a page should be designed to the best of abilities. How many times do you see cheap basic pages when the company is huge and this is a bad image reflection
Chris Moline @webmindset 9:39 AM on October 21, 2010
Excellent. I'm neck-deep in an industry that just doesn't get it... which is GREAT for my speaking fees and schedule, but I keep repeating mantras like #9 so much that I talk to myself on the road :) Keep up the great posts. I'm enjoying HubSpot, especially that cool one-take video.
C Scala 9:58 AM on October 21, 2010
Excellent article... I am guilty of #1 and I will change that today. Thanks Hubspot!
Sue Edwards 9:59 AM on October 21, 2010
Great blog. Learnt a lot. Will definitely look at my FB pages now.
Angela 10:25 AM on October 21, 2010
I can't wait for Facebook Questions to be available to EVERYONE! I need to start focusing on what a fan can gain from purchasing my product rather than sell sell sell. I also need to start commenting more on fan's posts!
Sharon 11:52 AM on October 21, 2010
This is a GREAT article - very pertinent, new info that many folks are not yet aware of... Thanks for sharing! Great stuff!
Uncle Waldo 1:01 PM on October 21, 2010
#10: Spam all of your friends 20 times a day trying to sell your crap.
Excellent article. Just the for the heads up on the upcoming Facebook Questions app gets Kudos from me.
Herb Lawrence 1:49 PM on October 21, 2010
How about not filling out your INFO tab? I run a small business development Center in rural Arkansas. The other day I pulled 40 small business pages I have "liked" over the past year to look at and believe it or not 6 had actually not filled out anything on the info tab.
In the same review found 8 that had a "spammer" posting on their wall about "work at home moms" making money that the facebook page administrator just let stay on their wall.
Dave Willcutts 3:00 PM on October 21, 2010
Great information. My question is regarding B2B companies. LinkedIn seems far more relevant and FB seems more consumer oriented. Is this true our should B2B companies be using FB as well?
MyMarkLLC 5:50 PM on October 21, 2010
I completely agree, especially with #9. If you don't give yourself a personality then who is going to want to get to know you? Great post, thanks for sharing.
Lois 6:21 PM on October 21, 2010
As always, an informative posts with lots of points to take away and work on. Thanks! :-)
Regarding #3, do you think there's any need to include a disclaimer around ownership/responsibility for photos posted online? We haven't enabled user posts yet as we're a bit sensitive to the potential issues around fans posting pictures of children (particularly other people's children) online.
Any thoughts or suggestions? Or are we being overly cautious?
Marlene Hauer 8:31 PM on October 21, 2010
Totally agree with Uncle Waldo, #10 should be spamming people with salesy stuff
Abe 10:14 PM on October 21, 2010
The real challenge is to give quality individual attention to fans, subscribers, followers, massively. Good post.
sale-gucci 11:39 PM on October 21, 2010
Thanks for providing such a great info.
Virtual Avatar 1:16 AM on October 22, 2010
It is always wise to remember keep in touch with the fans, they greatly appreciate your effort to communicate with them.
John Smith 3:34 AM on October 22, 2010
I think the biggest mistake can be to simply rely on your brand. Your facebook page HAS to be engaging. If you look at Oreo's page, they have a tab that has recipes so that fans get get baking. It's so simple but so effective!
seosen 7:22 AM on October 22, 2010
For a succesful business, I think the most important thing need to do is to find the matching point between customer needs and your expertises.
Vijay 7:47 AM on October 22, 2010
Posting with Multimedia content really attract non-fans, It is really good point. I am also become fan after watching video-clip on Facebook.
Diana Freedman 11:20 AM on October 22, 2010
Thanks everyone for all your awesome comments! You've posted fantastic #10's.
@Lois - As long as you monitor activity on your Facebook page, you can delete any objectionable photos fans upload. Just click on the photo, and click "Remove This Photo" below the image. Think of all the great user generated content you're missing out on by preventing everyone from posting!
@Dave Willcutts - You're right that LinkedIn is definitely more business-based, but B2B companies can definitely have successful Facebook pages. Your fan base might not be as large, but you'll still be sending updates and sparking conversations with a relevant audience. And if you have the budget for it, you can launch a Facebook engagement ad campaign that targets people based on their interest or network.
Serena Star Leonard 6:29 PM on October 22, 2010
My number 10 is letting your page languish. If you do not post often or leave your page for a few months, it becomes less and less effective, when you do come back to it you will find that people are not used to seeing it or dont recognise it any more.
Brady Lewis 7:20 PM on October 25, 2010
Great article. I totally agree with #1. People need to realize that Twitter and FB are not the same thing. They need to be treated differently.
And yes, I hate seeing people post tweets too long and truncated because they are specifically for Twitter.
Good post!
kkish 8:03 PM on October 25, 2010
10: Join Facebook groups and "like" other Facebook pages so that you can put obviously self-promotional posts on their walls, with little or no actual value for readers -- i.e., use Facebook to spam.
AudreyGardenLady 10:35 AM on October 26, 2010
I totally agree with Shannon Sullivan. People who ask me to send them something and then tell me they never read their emails make me nuts!So why bother with a Facebook page if you're not going to update it?
Chase Caswell 11:53 PM on November 02, 2010
Great Info..Will Keep It In Mind!! :)
Bilguun Ginjbaatar 10:28 AM on November 03, 2010
Hey Mike, who do you think will be bigger in 2015? Google or Facebook?
George sharp 10:45 AM on November 03, 2010
#10
Don't pay attention to what others are saying about you and don't interact with them.
David Marti 11:57 AM on November 03, 2010
#10 - setting up your business profile as an "individual" instead of a "business official page".
Thank you for the article!
Shellie Anne 12:33 PM on November 03, 2010
One of those times where we say it is better to not have a FB page than to have a poor one...
We all need to hire a full time person to manage all the social media now!