Facebook is an important element in the landscape of social media. This platform regularly updates its algorithm and features, so as to serve the requirements of modern users. This does not indicate that you need to implement all the strategies you are aware of. Evaluate the likes and dislikes of your audience. Plan all your strategies by taking some time away from your regular schedule. You have to avoid mistakes while branding on Facebook, so as to position your own brand in the right way. These are the top 4 Facebook branding mistakes you need to avoid:
1. Aggressive promotion on Facebook
You should not use Facebook only for branding, given that your audience will not look only for information about your brand. Facebook is mainly a social platform, and is used by the audience to form a connection with brands offering something of value to them – whether information, product or service. For this reason and more, most brands are focusing their efforts on getting more likes and growing the following of their brand pages.
While it is okay to share information with your loyal followers about the achievements of your brand, avoid overdoing it. In case you do not offer things of value to them, you will miss out valuable fans for your page and consequently, customers for your business offerings. People use Facebook for entertainment, interacting with and getting inspiration from like-minded users. For brand promotion, you need to look for unique ways to inspire visitors and provide them with a reason why they should come back to your page.
When you opt for an overly promotional strategy, you can soon find the ‘Like’ from your fans transforming into ‘Dislike’. You have to devise humane ways to engage Facebook visitors rather than bombarding them with discounts and deals.
2. Being only Like-focused
While it is essential to get ‘Like’ for your Facebook posts, as it is an indicator of how many people are being reached by your messages, you should mainly aim at getting people who can give good word of mouth to your brand and not simply ‘Like’. In other words, look for people who will be ready to ‘Like’ your post, share the same with the people in their networks and market your brand free of cost. The best strategy is to engage visitors and get ‘Like’ as well as ‘Share’.
It is a good idea to prepare an editorial calendar, so that you can strategically post content. You have to refer to online articles and experiment a bit to determine the best times and days to publish your Facebook posts and obtain more shares. Research conducted by the organization Buddy Media suggests that the pace of engagement for posts on Facebook are the greatest on Thursdays and Fridays.
3. Creating posts that are out of context
You might end up confusing your audience if you fail to align your brand with your posts. Everything should reflect your brand – whether it comes to videos, images or text. Keep in mind that for the sake of adding variety you should not publish posts that are out of context. You may make the most of all the major things that occur across the globe. Ensure that none of your posts is out of sync with your core brand message.
A perfect example of this can be seen on a site like Blogging Tips, where they are interviewing other blogging experts and creating original content for their audience. Not only does this create content for the site, it also provides value as well. This is how all brands should be creating content on social media.
While sharing updates and links, do not lose originality. Whether you are connecting with anybody on LinkedIn, sharing posts via Facebook or posting retweets, it is essential that your messages are customized. Do not always use the default text of share button.
When you take out time from your schedule to write a personal message or note, people notice the same. Once you do that, it will make your posts outstanding instantly. It can show to the audience that you are humble, pay a lot of importance to detail and go beyond. It can make your brand more successful.
4. Creating too long posts
It is important to write posts that are shorter in length, between 250 characters, which can get 60% higher shares. You may obtain even higher number of ‘Like’ in case you reduce the number of words to 80 characters or even less.
You have to determine how frequently you need to post content on Facebook. It can be bad for your brand if you post too often or too infrequently. Based on your target audience, you have to detect how frequently your fans would like to get posts from you. In order to maintain consistent results, you need to follow a specific pattern.
In case something comes up that makes you unable to publish posts for some days or months, it can be a good idea to inform your audience that you would be unavailable for that time span. Once you return, inform them that you are ‘back’. It will be a gesture that your audience will appreciate.
When you take care to avoid these Facebook branding mistakes, your campaigns can be more successful.