I come across many mistakes and myths about Social Media Marketing on a daily basis and there are many. However today I want to focus on some of the ones that relate to Facebook and Facebook Marketing. This is a good place to start because Facebook is the Big daddy of Social Media sites. So here goes:
1. I Need to Post ALL Day Everyday!
So there are 2 extremes here. People who don’t post at all and those that post too often. I am talking here about the ones that post TOO often. Comon guys seriously, do you really need to post 5 times a day? Really?
Despite what the statistics say I still have people argue me down, that they need to post 5 times a day!
OK consider this. When users login to FB they are exposed to approximately 1,500 pieces of information. Whoa! Information overload right? You bet! The average person likes 40 pages. Now can you imagine if every one of those 40 pages posted 5 times a day? That would be 200 photos sitting in our news feed, before we even got to see our friends posts! Yikes!
Sorry to break it to you, but people don’t login to FB to see a company’s posts, they go there to see their friends updates. Don’t be the company that resembles your friend who annoys you on FB by posting too many photos and updates everyday! We all already have too much information presented to us on a daily basis.
Still don’t believe me? Check your Likes, shares and comments! I see pages with over 10,000 likes yet their posts only get about 10 likes. That is approx less than 0.01% engagement. That is a good SIGN that the people who like your page have hidden you from their news feed, because you post TOO much!
2. The more likes I get the better!
It is all about quality and not quantity. The goal is to know your audience first. Who are they? What is their age, their location, their income levels, their interests etc? When you know who they are and where they hang out, then you target them.
Look I could get over 300 likes for all my pages by the end of the week, but that is not my goal. It is no use having my friends and family like my pages as they are not my potential customers.
I offer B2B services and therefore I am more present on channels that I know are where my target audience is.
You should do the same.
3. People aren’t reading my posts
That may be true but just because you are not getting likes, comments or sharing, it does not mean people aren’t reading them. Look FB has narrowed down who sees our posts and on average it is approx 16% of users that see our posts. They want you to pay for ad’s to get to all your followers.
However, we do know that user’s behavior on FB is a little different. People tend to read and watch your posts and gain trust over time before engaging or taking action. They are shy and also don’t like to share their likes and preferences on FB all the time, especially if your business page offers assistance how to lose weight, help with mental illness, marriage problems, health issues, money issues, debt issues, better job, relationship advice, help with children, making more money, legal matters, etc.
Test that strategy on your own friends in your news feed. You will see that the vast majority of people don’t interact on FB or keep a low profile and post only important photos or updates, and then there are the handful of FB focused people who post all day and everyday.
They are the ones who will like and comment and share. It is usually always a small percentage. So don’t be disheartened, just stay consistent and monitor your statistics – which is discussed below.
4. I pay FB just $5 to get me more likes
FB has this new ad feature where you just run a page ad for $5 a day to get more likes. They make it super easy for you as you don’t even need to create the ad, it is all automated.
What we see are very unfavorable results with those types of FB ad’s. Look I am a huge fan of FB ad’s but this sponsored page stuff is not too good.
We see new likes for pages, where the audience is completely unrelated to our target. We see this across many different industries we work with too. That means clients who use that feature get page likes from people who are not their ideal target audience which is not good.
FB has the ability to run ad’s for products and services on the right hand side that we prefer, as opposed to ads for more likes. You can get extremely targeted with these former type of ad’s and really narrow down the audience.
Save your $5 a day for paid likes and spend it on the better laser focused ad’s!
5. I Can Go and Buy likes
People still do this and I am not sure why it is like giving your money away. You can go and buy 1,000 new likes for $20 nowadays and sometimes as less as $5.
FB have figured it out folks and have shut down tens of thousands of fake profiles and even shut down company pages. Don’t do it.
6. FB does nothing for my bottom line
We must all remember first and foremost, FB is social media. It is not just to sell. People forget that sometimes. It is a place where we go hangout with friends and acquaintances and post our life experiences and see what others are doing.
Secondly it is a place where businesses can advertise and / or share their products and services.
It is more about brand recognition and promoting your business whilst bearing the above in mind.
By being out there and creating content that people want to read and perhaps share, you are succeeding for your business. BY interacting with existing your customers on their turf you are succeeding for your business.
When potential clients hear about you they research you on the web, they go to your social media pages and see what you are all about, especially if you are selling services.
Facebook has recommendations too which are essentially reviews for your business. So you have to be there and although your results may not be directly attributable to Facebook, you can bet they are indirectly.
FB should be a medium to Long Term goal it is not an overnight get rich quick scheme!
7. It is hard to measure FB effectiveness
It is not as hard as you think. Facebook has its insights page which allows you to go in and review all our likes, your visitors demographics and location. We are able to look at our posts and see which ones got the most views, how viral they were, which got the most shares and the highest rate of engagement.
This is critical and very valuable data. We should be monitoring these stats all the time and doing more posts of those that get the higher engagement and are shared the most. This will ensure we are always improving and moving forward with our FB posts and getting the most engagement out of them.
You also have Google Analytics which is a free tool, that allows us to go see the number of referrals from FB to our website, the pages they viewed, how long they stayed and more. Again this is critical information in seeing how effective FB is in driving quality leads to our website.
We can then decide if it is generating enough leads or not, why it isn’t or if it is, why aren’t people taking action etc?
Personally this is plenty to measure the effectiveness of almost everything we do on FB and how it relates to our website and overall business.
8. You can’t sell anything on FB
This is not true too. Taking into account #6 above, FB is a wonderful channel to display high quality images, links and content to many people. If you have what people NEED, then they will come. Simple!
Just as in #1 above where I spoke about people posting too much everyday – which is a case of over confidence that people want to see what you post all the time. Well there is a lack of confidence issue too where the danger is in posting and being scared to sell. You must SELL yourself on FB from time to time. Don’t be scared.
Get the traffic, have the Call to action and convert that lead / visitor to a potential client or actual customer.
Don’t be scared to sell.
