5 Mistakes Your are Making on Facebook

5 Mistakes Your are Making on Facebook… And How to Avoid Them!

Facebook is a great way for small businesses to market their business. Here are 5 common Facebook marketing mistakes to avoid:

1. Brand your page
When setting up the page you have the option to brand your cover graphic. Rather than just uploading a random photo, hire a graphic artist to create a branded image for you. There are so many creative ways to use that space, especially in combination with your profile graphic. Follow Facebook guidelines of not promoting anything directly (don’t put a coupon or special offer there) but use it to tell the bigger story about your business.

2. Use the tabs
Those little boxes under your cover photo? Those are called tabs. There are a plethora of apps that you can use in those spaces. Several email programs like Constant Contact and Aweber have apps that make it easy to integrate  it on your page. Search for the software you use on facebook and it will guide you through the setup steps. In less than 5 minutes you can start accepting newsletter signups from your facebook page! Go the extra mile have your graphic artist customize them for maximum impact.

See how Subscribe, Shop and Blog tabs are all branded for this page?

3. Interact… or die alone
So you’ve posted lots of stuff to your page but where is everyone? They’re out there – but they’re not going to find your page without some interaction. Using your business page follow other business that have the same audience you would like. For instance, if you produce organic chocolate, follow natural health magazines and organic resource websites. Comment and interact on those pages and their audience will naturally discover your page when they see your posts. You’re not going to get new friends if you always stay at home, right? (Tip: you can comment on this blog post right now and use your Facebook URL as a link to your business!).


4. Share the love!
Wow, you have 1,000 friends? You must be pretty popular.  Whether you have 100 or 1,000 make sure to SHARE your own content. When you write an interesting post or a pat on the back on your business page, make sure you share that post on your personal page. Don’t do it every day (or you’ll quickly go from 1,000 to 0 friends) but share the most interesting stuff. It’s called networking. Just do it already.

5. Edit links before sharing
Speaking of sharing, did you know that you can edit the links that you post on facebook? Whenever you post a link in a status update it auto fills in the page title and description of that page or article. Click on that information and voila! you can change to anything you want. If you’re linking to industry news – add your own comments or take on it. Make it reader friendly and offer a new point of view. Just hover over the area and it will turn yellow, meaning it is editable.

Facebook gives you an opportunity to reach out to your customers in a casual and conversational way, don’t make the mistake of sitting back and waiting for things to happen. Do you have any tips on how to use Facebook for business? Share them in the comment section below!