We maintain several Facebook pages for our clients, and here are a few hints and tips to help with yours. Here are five common small-business mistakes to avoid on your Facebook business page.
1. Don’t Post Too Often
Most industries should aim to post no more than once or twice a day to avoid overcrowding followers’ news feeds.
There are exceptions, though. For example, it’s appropriate for restaurants to post frequently about food specials, happy hours or live music events, or for medical businesses to post about recent health studies.
The best times to post are between 1 and 4 p.m. late in the week and on weekends, according to a study, however, it may not be ideal to post on Friday afternoons in the summer because people may start their weekends early.
2. Don’t Post Only About Your Business
Promoting your business should account for 20 percent or less of your posts if your products or services aren’t used daily by customers.
Businesspeople who can follow this rule include real estate agents, caregivers, lawyers and dentists. A real estate agent can focus 80% of his or her posts on providing useful information about buying and selling real estate and 20% on marketing listings.
Businesses that can get away with more frequent promotional posts include clothing shops that get new clothes in every day, or restaurants with daily specials.
3. Don’t Forget Photos and Videos
Posts with photos and videos get more page views than posts without them and video has become more popular and effective than photos
You can post videos of your employees talking about the kind of work they do, customer testimonials, or your business helping out a local charity or organization.
Videos should be short for example we have an online video of how our POS system works, and it lasts just over 3 minutes. You can make the videos ‘sexier’ my using an easy to use video editor such as Window Movie Maker.
4. Don’t Alienate Customers
Avoid posting anything that could offend or alienate customers, such as your views on politics or religion. This includes publicly visible posts on your personal Facebook page, which customers can easily find.
5. Don’t Argue with Negative Reviews
Having a presence on Facebook and other online sites such as Yelp opens you up to negative comments or reviews.
Most customers expect to hear back from you, too: 52% expect a response to their review within a week of writing it. People often take a negative review super personally and make the situation so much worse than it needs to be. (see President Trumps Twitter account)
Plan for negative reviews by having a prepared set of responses, which can help you avoid knee-jerk reactions
An appropriate response to most negative reviews includes a thank you for the customer’s business, an apology for the bad experience, and an explanation saying the situation is being taken care of or has already been handled.
However, if someone is “trolling” you — trying to get a negative reaction out of you to take down your business on purpose — it’s best to give a simple response and then move on. Don’t let it escalate.
