Post During Odd Hours

Usually, business posts are made between 9 AM and 5 PM during weekdays. Weekends are typically quiet. However, most Facebook users are on the site after these times. Keep in mind the average user works during your business hours. Waiting until 3 PM to post on weekdays helps keep your posts visible for users. Posting on weekends is a great way to interact with users. Schedule your posts around when your target audience is most likely to be at home for best results.

Ask For Likes And Comments

Don’t just assume fans will “like” or comment on a post. Instead, encourage them to interact by asking them to “like” a post or add their feedback. When prompted, users are twice as likely to interact, equaling a higher interaction rate overall.

Add Meat To Posts

Many businesses try to stay within Twitter’s 140 character limit so posts work on both Twitter and Facebook. Whenever possible, make your posts slightly longer. Several sentences better describes your message and increases interaction. Every post doesn’t have to be long, but at least one a day should have a little more meat to it.

Add Photos

When scanning through their news feed, a user notices an image before a status update. Grab a user’s attention and increase interaction by posting pictures regularly. Include a call to action as mentioned above and you’ll further increase interaction.

Give Your Posts Time

Don’t try to flood a fan’s news feed with posts just to get their attention. On average, most users only expect to see a few posts a day. Depending on the type of business or site you have, users may expect far more. Consider your target audience and what they might expect. Too many posts means users don’t have time to read them. Give fans a chance to see your posts. Most posts have at least several hours of visibility, meaning fewer posts equal more interactions.

Email Newsletter

Many sites already have an email newsletter. This may be an email sent out to subscribers each day, week or month with regular content or a special offers email. Either way, people have subscribed to the newsletter in order to keep up on current events and offers. Advertise your Facebook page in every issue, especially if you have a special promotion going on.

Banner On Website

In most cases, when someone searches for your business through a general search engine, your website appears before your Facebook business page. Place some type of banner on your website’s home page to promote your Facebook page. Fans can then visit your page for the latest updates while they’re interacting with friends on Facebook.

Other Social Channels

Leverage the power of any other social channels you use. ReadyBuzz helps you create a multi-channel social media solution. Promote Facebook campaigns on other channels, such as Twitter. These channels can lead back to Facebook for contests, discounts or product release news.

Shareable Offer

Make your campaign shareable. For instance, if you have a contest to win your latest product or service, offer entrants a chance at additional entries for every person they refer. Discounts, freebies and contest prizes are all shareable offers. Provide a way for fans to share and they will let all their friends know about your campaign.

Facebook Ads

Believe it or not, people do notice the ads on Facebook. The ads display to users based upon their interests and activities and their friends’ interests and activities. Take advantage of Facebook ads to list your latest promotion. Even a small amount of fans can lead to a successful promotion if each fan has the average 100-200 friends.

Promote To Contacts

The first thing you have to do is promote your Facebook page. Start by sending out a message to all your contacts and customers promoting your new page. Many businesses choose to print the page’s URL on receipts or hand out business cards. Local promotion is key to increasing exposure. Once you promote to current customers and contacts, they will “Like” your page and even share your page with their own friends and contacts.

Share Positive Reviews

Positive reviews are always a great thing to post on your page. For those who may not be familiar with your business, sharing positive reviews from other businesses and customers increases the chances of hooking a new customer. You can ask fans of your page to post comments of what they really think about your product, store or services. Real feedback on a social network is the best promotion you can have, especially locally.

Call To Action Welcome

Local businesses benefit greatly by having a call to action page as their welcome screen. Tell Facebook users why they should “Like” your page. Provide a tantalizing tidbit about your company. The page should link to the “Like” screen. This screen can then offer some sort of discount or special offer to entice fans to visit your local store.

Respond To Everyone

The one thing people love most about local businesses is the personal attention. Most employees know regular customers by name. Provide this same personal care your customers expect on your Facebook page. Whenever possible, respond to everyone. If they provide positive feedback, thank them. If they have a question about an upcoming event, provide a prompt response. Interact with them as if they were actually in your business.

Don’t Spam Fans

Many Facebook users have hundreds of friends and like hundreds of pages. Posts are lost quickly in their news feed. Your first reaction may be to post more often to ensure your fans have a chance to see at least some communications from you. Posting often is great, but posting too often will turn fans away.

Respect your fans and don’t post every few minutes or hours. The posts become redundant and annoying. Unless you are running a contest with a short deadline, there is really no reason to have over 10 posts a day, with less being the norm. If you do have a legitimate reason to post often, warn fans upfront before they like your page.

Don’t Contact Fans Directly

Some complaints require private communication to deal with. Instead of initiating private contact yourself, respond to the complaint with a message to please contact the company by email or a contact form on your website with full details of the problem so you can resolve it quicker. This shows that you respect the customer’s concerns and you keep the comments to a minimum. When the problem is resolved, ask the customer to please respond to the initial comment stating everything was resolved or you can do this yourself.

Never Antagonize Fans

Just because fans have a problem with your company, it doesn’t give you the right to antagonize them. Remember to always be respectful no matter what. Don’t argue and always remain polite. If the commenter refuses any help or doesn’t respond, you do have the right to remove extremely offensive posts from your wall. These include pointless rants, posts including expletives and those completely off topic from your company.

Always ask the poster to remove the post themselves first to avoid offending anyone. If it hasn’t been removed within three days, delete it to avoid potential arguments or offending other fans.

Violation 1 – Personal Over Page

Facebook has two types of pages. The first is the personal account and the second is a business or cause page. The first is for individuals only. The second is for building a community. If a business creates a personal account page in order to interact with fans, Facebook will shut the account down. Businesses of any size must use a page to build their community and post updates about products, contests and company news.

Violation 2 – Contests

Facebook is extremely picky about how contests are run on the site. Follow their simple rules and you’re fine. Otherwise, your page could be shut down. First, Facebook must be absolved of any involvement in the contest or promotion. Should something not go as planned, Facebook cannot be blamed in any way.

Second, only apps on Facebook can be used to administer contests. Third party apps or sending users to a different site are not allowed. This ensures those who want to enter stay on a site they trust.

Finally, the “Like” button can never be used as a method for entering a contest. A business can ask people to like a page before they are allowed to enter, but it cannot be the entry itself.

If these terms are not followed, the page will be reported quickly.

Violation 3 – Tagging

Tagging is something best left to individuals. While businesses can use the feature, they must have the permission of everyone they tag. Many businesses make the mistake of tagging a fan or individual in order to get their attention and gain more fans. However, this is a quick way to lose fans and have a page shut down.

Respect your fans’ privacy and leave the tagging to their friends, not the pages they like.

Interact With Followers

When a follower wants to address a comment or question to you, they can either send a direct message or include your Twitter name in the comment, preceded by the @ symbol. You can easily find all these mentions from your Twitter profile page. The reason people use these mentions is to interact with you.

Taking the time to interact in return helps build stronger relationships between your business and its customers. Even those who don’t mention you will be impressed by seeing you answer questions and respond to comments. Some companies take the initiative by holding special Q&A days on Twitter for their followers.

Share Links And Related Companies

It’s great to build your own business. However, after a while, followers may get tired of hearing about a day of great sales or the latest community picnic. Odds are, you are partnered with other businesses. Take the time to share information about your partners. For instance, a catering company may want to help their followers by sharing a link and some details about local photographers they partner with.

Numerous tutorials exist online. Instead of always creating your own tutorials, post links to third party sites with reliable tutorials on using your product. Everyone can use a few tips and tricks. More than likely, your followers will get even more help on other products they own.

By sharing sites that don’t lead back to you, you show your followers you are confident. It also builds a strong relationship between yourself and your partners. More importantly, it keeps your followers eagerly awaiting the next tweet to see how it will benefit them.

Know When To Respond

Every negative comment doesn’t mean an instant response is required. See what the comment actually refers to first. If the person is simply arguing with another fan or follower, let it be unless it becomes inappropriate. You then have the power to delete it and post an update stating why it was deleted to prevent future indiscretions.

If the comment is actually directed to the company or a specific product or service, it is your responsibility to address it. Even if it is a simple apology, you need to let your customers know you are there for them. If a product isn’t working, provide details on how to return it, get it repaired or steps for them to fix it at home. Keep your response positive, but don’t ignore the comment.

Offer Discounts

Perhaps a customer had a bad experience with your company. Offer them a discount or free offer to entice them to do business with you again. By reaching out, you prove that you want their business and value them as a customer.

Provide Contact Information

Provide contact information when there is a negative comment so they can address the correct department and get the right response. This lets customers know you want to help them and get to the bottom of the problem.

Be Proactive

If one customer has a negative comment about a product or service, do your research to find out if there is a real problem that may affect others. If so, be proactive and provide the solution in your next update. Give credit to the first person or people who posted about the issue.

Remove The Post

Start by first removing the offensive post, if possible. If there is already a lengthy discussion about it, start with the second tip and then remove the post. You want any embarrassing or offensive material removed from your account as quickly as possible, otherwise you may lose new fans and followers.

While it’s true the damage is already done, you can minimize the number of people who actually see it. Your fans and followers will appreciate you taking the time to remove something so controversial.

Acknowledge The Mistake

Don’t just remove the post and pretend like nothing happened. Post an apology or explanation. If a lengthy explanation is necessary, publish a blog post on your website and link to it from your social media page. For Facebook, consider using the Note or Info option to provide details. People understand that mistakes happen. Perhaps something was posted in the heat of the moment or perhaps a thought didn’t sound quite as good when actually written out.

Reiterate Company Values

For offensive or controversial posts, take the chance to reiterate company values. Ensure fans and followers understand how seriously your company has taken the issue and exactly where your business stands. Since it is usually a best policy not to discuss religion, politics or other personal opinions, keep policies open minded so as not to discriminate or make a group of followers feel disliked.

Erase With Promotion

Run a temporary promotion to help to essentially erase the situation. People love a great deal. Offer a special coupon or discount to followers. Let them participate in a contest or offer exclusive feedback on a new product or service. Whatever you do, give your followers a reason to continue following you that has nothing to do with the embarrassing post.

You can’t always prevent something problematic from being posted. However, you can help minimize the damage and cover your company’s good name if you act quickly.

No Where To Send Followers

If you become to involved with your social media campaign, you often find yourself spending all your time on updating posts, developing new strategies and reading followers’ comments you forget about your own website. Part of the purpose of social media is to drive traffic back to your site. If you do not maintain your website, you have no where to send your followers if they want more information.

Disconnect From Customers

Remember that not everyone uses social networks. Even if they do, they may not be aware of your page or profile. This means you are disconnecting your company from all your customers and potential customers who are not social media users. Your company should always be accessible to everyone, whether they are using the latest trends or not.

Traditional Advertising

Relying on social media alone defeats the purpose entirely if no one is aware of your presence. Social media campaigns usually rely upon traditional forms of advertising, especially when the account is fairly new. Social media by itself means you disregard TV ads, offline promotions and even website ads. All of these draw followers to your page.

Loss Of Relevant Information

Social media is popular because it provides short blips of information. If the user wants more information, they can visit the website or wait for more details as they are posted. Most users have a short attention span and may forget to come back to your page to see the latest updates until it is too late. If you rely strictly on social media to provide information to your followers, you risk becoming reliant on a few lines of text for all promotions and details. Users want relevant information in addition to the social media posts.

It is important to always combine social media with other marketing tools. Each compliments the other to create a strong campaign that produces incredible results.

Building a page isn’t enough. Participating in your page goes a long way, but it still doesn’t provide the traffic you want and need. Think of the most popular and successful social network profiles and pages. They gained their stardom by advertising. Most of their campaigns are heavily advertised in various media outlets and even on the social network itself.

You have an infinite number of ways to advertise your page. Many companies start by running a promotion which they advertise through social network ads, such as those on Facebook, sponsored search engine ads and ads on their own website. After all, if no one knows you have a social network page, how will they ever become a fan?

Look for ways to create targeted advertising. Paying for ads which may never reach your target audience just takes away from your marketing budget. For instance, Facebook targets ads to users based on their interests and search history. With millions using the network, why not advertise your page to other users on the network?

Advertising doesn’t have to become a permanent thing. You can focus on advertising just when you are running new promotions or introducing a new product. Once you have had several successful social advertising campaigns, your fan base will drastically increase. From here, your fans actually do the majority of the work for you.

When you post, they begin to share it. This becomes your advertising. However, you do need a way to boost your fans and followers in the beginning. Don’t let all your hard work go to waste simply because no one knows your social network profile exists. Advertise on your website, on other sites and even offline. Get the word out and you’ll save time later as others become your own personal promoters.