Facebook is a wonderful opportunity for businesses. It’s a place to actively engage with your customers and potential customers. It’s like the ‘virtual water cooler’. There are a few things that bug me about the way some businesses use Facebook and I wouldn’t want my readers to commit the following sins… so here we go, some advice for you.
1. Buying likers/followers
There are plenty of sites available where you can purchase a ‘tribe’ of likers for your Facebook page. I’m so sad to see that it still happens, that people buy “fans” to manipulate their numbers. Please, don’t EVER do this! Not only is it a waste of money but also a waste of time. Those likers have not chosen to actually LIKE your page and they will most likely NEVER buy from you, so why would you invest your time in them? Your Facebook page should be a place where you engage with your customers and potential customers, and should not be a place to show competitors that you have more likers. They’re not going to be fooled anyway, it’s usually pretty obvious when you’ve purchased likers. So, invest your time properly and create a REAL tribe.
2. Using too many #hashtags
Facebook introduced #hashtags a while ago and although it’s a good idea to use strategic hashtags, don’t go tagging every other word in your post. The idea of a hashtag is to be able to promote and search for a media channel or important indicator, but not to tag every other word in a sentence. There is no advantage of hash-tagging words in Facebook the way you do in for example Twitter or Instagram, so don’t do it.
3. Automatically tweeting your tweets to Facebook
Whilst this is an extremely convenient way of doing things, it’s not the greatest way to use Facebook. Why? Because Facebook wasn’t made the way twitter is made. Facebook is extremely effective when using posts with images, and twitter doesn’t necessarily lend itself to this. Also, within Facebook you’re not restricted to 140 words. I’m not saying that you should be writing essays, but definitely do utilise a few more words. Facebook can be very effective when used properly so put some time into it and truly engage with your fans.
