Written by ContentPowered.com
Success on Facebook, success in bringing users to your page to like your posts and engage with your brand, relies on those posts themselves. Ads can only do so much, if you have nothing there to support them. A constant flow of attractive, engaging content is a requirement, not a luxury. Yet even when you post every day, users don’t seem to be hooked. What’s going wrong?
1. You’re Too Commercial
You’re very likely selling something through your Facebook page or your website, which means you want to put that product in front of your readers as often as possible in as visible a way as possible. The problem is, most users don’t want to see advertising. If you’re turning your Facebook posts into the digital equivalent of a salesman shouting from across the street, they’re going to ignore you.
The key here is to remember subtlety. You’re using a social network as a marketing tool. You can’t be direct and up-front about your advertising. Rather, you need to use the social network to establish a relationship with your potential customers. Don’t shout about how much they need your product; talk to them about the problems they have. Don’t demand they visit your product page; show them a solution you have to the problems they face.
2. You’re Too Political
Controversial language is a great way to spur discussion on your page. The problem is that when you’re too controversial, you’re going to alienate one side of the potential discussion. It’s one thing to playfully tease sports fans and get a debate about players and draft picks. It’s quite another to alienate a political party by taking a stance on a sensitive issue. You’ll find tensions high and a discussion out of your control, if you find any discussion at all.
The key here is, once again, subtlety. You want to avoid the overtly antagonistic language and the stances that enrage a segment of your audience. Instead, you want to keep your divisive opinions to lighthearted subjects, like putting sauce on a steak. The moment tempers flare, you start to lose ground.
3. Your Grammar Stinks
Typos, grammatical errors and other basic mistakes can kill your reputation online. It’s not a conscious decision on the part of your users; it’s a subconscious loss of faith and trust. Use Your instead of You’re and you anger anyone who knows the proper usage of each word. Leave a typo in your post and you’re advertising to your audience that you just don’t care enough to review before you post.
The good news is that users are fairly tolerant, all things considered. The bad news is that their tolerance goes down the longer you leave mistakes alive or the more frequently you make them. Sooner or later, you’re going to make a typo. It happens to everyone. When you fix it quickly, users let it slide. When you leave it be, they lose a little faith. Fix your typos when you make them and you gain that much more respect.
4. You Post Too Often
The number of times you post each day or each week will depend heavily on what you’re posting, how you’re posting it and who you’re posting it for. If you’re posting too often for your audience to support, however, you’re going to run into issues with your content earning spam flags. The last thing you need is to earn a spammer label, so take the time to determine how often you should post.
Using Facebook’s analytics, you can check into your history to find the times when your post frequency was most successful. You can also run tests for the future, to find out how often you should post, considering different types of content. You will have to consider both engagement rate and conversion rate in your analysis of the data to determine which posts you need to be posting.
5. You Ignore Images
When you post on your page, do you include images and videos, or do you just post text? If all you’re posting is text, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. No one reads text these days. You need an image to draw the eye and a compelling headline to keep it. Only once you have those two elements will you find users sticking around enough to read your post and maybe click your link.
Posting a link gives you the benefit of Facebook generating a preview image, which you can customize on your site using graph element meta tags. For other posts, you should create an image whenever possible. If you don’t have a graphic designer on hand, it might be worth the expense to hire one. Images are that important.
6. You Ignore Your Users
What do you do when a user asks you a question on your Facebook posts? Do you even know when they do? This is a problem all too many businesses have. They treat Facebook the same way they might treat a brochure they send out in the mail or a TV commercial they commission; a passive, one-way form of advertising and communication.
Facebook is a social network and that means you need to be social when using it. When a user asks a question, answer it. When a user thanks you for your service, show your appreciation. When a user has an issue, take the time to refer them to customer service and try to solve that issue. Communication is a two-way street, and you need to be aware of your users and their needs.
7. You Don’t Invite Engagement
One reason many Facebook pages seem to get little in the way of engagement is because they don’t invite that engagement. When you make a post, you should be thinking about how you can get readers to respond to that post. Ask questions. Host a poll. Offer an image for them to caption. The key is to give your users a way in, open a conversation. Just like the previous point, you need to follow up with communication to keep them interested and engaged with your brand.
8. You Have No Audience
If you’re putting posts up on Facebook and hoping for a hundred likes and a dozen shares, you’re going to be out of luck if you only have 25 people following your page. Many businesses jump into Facebook knowing that it’s been used successfully by thousands of businesses in the past. They play around with the platform for a few weeks or a few months, but nothing seems to come of it. Facebook growth is a slow, deliberate process, and it’s not something you can rush. Take your time, do everything properly, do your research and you’ll come out ahead.
