The Facebook Post Run Down, the 5 Most Common Mistakes

Social media sounds easy enough for anyone but until you dive in, you might be surprised. There are just so many ways to run a social media campaign, wrong and right. Ultimately though, driving more traffic through better engagement is always the main goal. Most bad Facebook posts are due to too many words making them too complex for an average reader, poor un-researched content and pure laziness. You can tell when there is no effort on a post just like you can tell which ones are more catchy to draw people in.

Here is the run down of the 5 most common Facebook mistakes when posting:

#1 Most Common Facebook Post Mistake: Too Much Text: Facebook Posts aren’t for paragraphs. They need to be small bite-sized items that can either be digested right on the post – meaning they get the entire idea right from the one post and can easily like or share it – or will entice people to click a link to read a longer piece of content. A good rule of thumb is to follow Twitter’s 140 character constraint. Every time you make a post limit it to that amount of characters. This will force you to condense your idea to its basic form and make it easy for your Fans to read and understand it.

#2 Most Common Facebook Post Mistake: Including Multiple Links: Each Facebook Post should include one call-to-action to achieve one goal. Providing multiple calls-to-action will only serve to confuse users and make it harder for them to digest the post – which will destroy your post’s click-through rate. Think of each Facebook Post like an online ad – it should succinctly provide a single valuable offer – be it an image, video, ebook or product information – designed to entice users to take an action.

#3 Most Common Facebook Post Mistake: Directly Promoting a Product or your Business: Most times posts that directly promote products or sales come from businesses that are new to Facebook. They try to use it the same way that they use traditional marketing like flyers and print ads and fail, leaving them thinking that Facebook doesn’t work. Now, it is OK to promote your products or business in your Facebook posts, but you need to be creative. These posts need to provide some value for users, either in the form of entertainment or valuable information. Facebook Posts about sales and promotions are also OK, but there are best practices to follow to keep them from being complete sales pitches:

1. Make it SUPER easy for fans to get the deal/discount you’re providing

2. Make it exclusive for Facebook fans only – by either Like-gating the coupon or only posting about it on Facebook

3. Give ideas or examples of what your fans can buy

**Bonus: Provide a coupon code to use for online purchases. This gives the allure of a sale being extra exclusive to holders of the coupon code and no one else.

#4 Most Common Facebook Post Mistake: Not Responding to Negative Comments: One important thing to remember about Facebook (and social media in general) is that your work is not final when the post is made. You must monitor your posts to watch to see their level of engagement, to help optimize your future activities, and respond to user comments. Every comment that asks a question, makes a suggestion or includes negative feedback must be responded to by the Page (comments like “I love it!” or “I do that to!” do not require responses). If you leave these unattended it will make your fans feel unappreciated and will deter any future commenters.

#5 Most Common Facebook Post Mistake: Begging for Likes and Shares: Asking people to like and share your Facebook posts, and especially your Facebook Page, is a big no-no. This sounds like begging and will turn most people off. You need to provide some form of incentive or interest to propel people to engage with you. Liking and sharing can be the mechanisms that people are told to use to engage with you, but it has to be done in a way that is fun or useful. While I’m on the subject: Please avoid asking people to Like your Facebook Page without providing an incentive for them to. It’s OK to put a call-to-action for people to Like you on your website, but to truly drive more Likes it needs to include a reason for them to click. Here are a couple of examples of good incentives you can use:

1. “Like” us for Fan-only coupons and contests

2. “Like” us for Facebook-exclusive behind-the-scenes photos and videos

3. We announce all new stock shipments on our Facebook Page first. “Like” us to stay in the loop

If you didn't know these 5 most common mistakes before today then now you can revise the way you network socially and provide better customer engagement. This will not only increase traffic but sales as well.

Personally I feel that adding too much content and too many links in each post gets rather confusing and deters people from coming back. Which mistake do you think is the worst and why?

Article Source: WishPond

Image Source: mkhmarketing on Flickr