It’s easy to forget that social media is just one more of your marketing efforts. And like all of your marketing efforts, you need to keep an eye on best practices and common pitfalls so you can fine-tune it for success. Here are a few to keep in mind as you build your brand on Facebook.
Being Overly Sales-Driven
A little self-promotion is fine, but the thing that makes social media different from the rest of your marketing is that key social aspect. This means not always asking your audience to sign up for this or click through to that—instead, think of how you can provide value to your followers without asking them to do anything. Everyone knows that content marketing and social media go hand in hand, but what kind of content are you creating? Is it all salesy and product-driven? Or do you create content that genuinely offers advice and expertise that your audience will find valuable? The latter is what you should strive for.
Neglecting the Call-to-Action
While you may be posting daily content that is engaging and valuable to your audience, you need to take advantage of a prominent call-to-action so that your fans can reach out for more when they’re ready. Social media conversions often take time: someone may Like your Facebook page and absorb your content every day but may not contact you for more information until months later. Rather than forcing them to click through to your site and find the contact page, etc., make it easy for them by using Facebook’s call-to-action option. That way they can connect directly from your page, and you can control which avenue they connect with: a phone call, a request for a demo, or another means you would prefer. As long as you have a way to track those conversions, utilizing this feature is a social media must.
Promoting Posts With No Measurable ROI
We’re marketers: we love to promote things! Facebook gives many options to signal boost your posts, and it can be tempting to “boost” every post we share with the hopes of getting more eyeballs. But some posts—like a daily blog that’s not tied to any particular strategy—don’t need to be promoted. If you’re paying to have content in front of a larger audience, ensure that you’re not doing it willy-nilly and that you have a way of measuring if it’s actually having an impact: set goals for impressions, clicks, etc. in advance so you can have a way of gauging success.
Ignoring Your Audience
“But I’m posting every day! How am I ignoring them?” Posting every day doesn’t mean you’re engaging with your audience. You may be flat-out ignoring your audience by not responding to comments, or your neglect may be more subtle. That is, the content you post may not seek to engage the audience to even leave comments in the first place. Ask questions. Ensure your copy is inviting conversation. Otherwise you’re just throwing content at them, even if it is valuable upon click-through.
Not Doing A/B Testing
As mentioned above, Facebook (and all social media) is still part of your marketing. With that in mind (plus Facebook’s competitive algorithms) you’re probably already using Facebook ads. But are you A/B testing them? Headlines and images are two of the most powerful elements of your ads and if you’re not testing different versions, you could be running costly and inefficient campaigns.
Want to learn more about how you can improve the bang for your buck on Facebook? Download this free webinar, Boost Call Conversions from Facebook and LinkedIn with DialogTech. In it we teach you how to drive phone leads from these platforms and how to track them, too.