Ever-changing and still the most popular social media platform, Facebook is a great way for companies to connect with loyal customers and new consumers. A wealth of useful information can be found on the profiles that this website contains, giving businesses an opportunity to provide valuable data and receive useful feedback all in one place.
However, the landscape of Facebook can be fraught with peril as unruly visitors, inexperienced employees and uncertain marketers can make a mess of what should be a friendly and professional public forum. Avoid some of the major social media pitfalls that companies commonly fall victim to and keep Facebook an important point of first contact for the public.
Delegate update rights
Quite a few companies have full-time employees whose sole purpose is to manage the social networking pages that a company has created. Such a position is very useful, but it requires that a business be financially strong enough to support it. For those organizations that don’t have the resources at the outset for such an expense, be sure to carefully select employees who will be able to fill this role. An owner might easily perform this task themselves, but more than likely there is someone more experienced with social media outreach to do so.
Coordinate with sales
Promotions that are conducted throughout the year are a great way to raise interest in a company, but for optimum attendance and enthusiasm, they need to be coordinated across platforms. A Facebook profile or status update that fails to mention important events will be doing a disservice to the sales associates and marketing officials who have spent so much time putting a promotion together. Be sure that all departments are on board, especially those in charge of social media. Even if the person to whom those responsibilities have been delegated is rather low on the totem pole, she needs to be kept abreast of all promotional developments.
Filtering company news
They say that there’s no such thing as bad press, but unfortunately this isn’t the case when it comes to Facebook. Company news is a great resource for coming up with content that can be placed on a Facebook page, but some of it may not be appropriate for open consumption. This extends to things besides bad news. In fact, boring news might be most harmful to a company looking to draw in consumers with an online presence. The minutiae of day to day operations don’t warrant an update, so it is important to carefully analyze the goings-on in an organization to determine what will be of interest to Facebook users.
Overdoing media
Online media platforms are tailor-made for sharing videos, audio, links and other digital creations. The more of these that are included on a Facebook page, the better. However, this is true only up to a certain point, after which it is possible for a profile page to become overly-saturated with links to YouTube videos and other company blogs. A great deal of restraint is important when conducting social networking campaigns, if for no other reason than the fact that consumers have access to an unlimited amount of media to begin with. Only those add-ons and links that are especially relevant or interesting should be posted. For example – avoid sharing a video of an office’s most popular song every day. Instead, compile a list for the end of the month or week. This will be far more interesting for consumers, and more importantly, those who wish to ignore it will be able to do so much more easily.