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Facebook Marketing Advice You Should NOT Follow



With over one billion active Facebook users worldwide, a Facebook presence is a virtual must-have for almost any business. But along with over a billion users comes a whole lot of "experts" (or so-called "experts") in using the platform as a business tool, which equals a bounty of useless marketing advice. Here are the 5 top examples of BAD Facebook marketing advice that are surprisingly common - is your company practicing any of them?

1. Buy Fans and Followers.
Facebook has many uses for a business, but chief among them is the ability to engage with customers on a more personal level. By buying fake followers, the only positive that comes out of this is the number of likes at the top of the Facebook page, and at best a perception of popularity. But these artificially created fans will not engage with the business nor will they be purchasing your product and/or service, and they may just make your business seem more unapproachable and "corporate" to genuine fans that actually care. This is considered a bad practice in the business community; it can really damage the reputation you've worked so hard to create. Earn and engage with real fans in a positive way, and they will do the growing for you.

2. Hashtag Everything.
Last year, Facebook introduced hashtagging to their platform to compete with competitors like Twitter; but this actually hasn't been favored among Facebook users thus far. Not only that, "Posts with hashtags actually have less Viral Reach, on average, than posts without hashtags," says Edgerank Checker in one report. With that being said, keep your hashtagging to a minimum. Remember, at the other end of every social post is a human being interacting with your brand through reading and posting. Anything that interferes with the natural reading and posting process, like unnatural or over-used hashtags, only dilutes your messages and bogs down your reach.

3. Only Use Facebook.
Although Facebook is a great marketing tool, it isn't the only platform to market your business. Utilize other social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest as a part of your overall marketing strategy. Social media platforms change and grow over time, and it's a good investment of your time to build a presence on all of them to reach as many customers in different ways as possible. Considering also that different demographics use different social media platforms, it may be helpful to tailor your marketing strategy to connect with the segment of your customer base that uses each one.

4. Flood the News Feed.
Some might think that the more you post the more people you might reach, right? Well, in the case of Facebook, the more you post, the more likely a fan is to "unlike" the page. Don't overwhelm your fans with too many posts; all this does is dilute the overall message you are trying to convey, and builds a type of "tolerance" to your posts, increasing the chances that they will be ignored. Consider instead posting once to twice a day. As far as timing goes, many people are active on Facebook at the end of the day and during weekends, but this may vary according to your business. Thus, be sure to utilize your Facebook insights to see when your fans are engaging with your page, and schedule your posts accordingly.

5. Link Facebook Ads to Your Facebook Page.
The goal of a Facebook ad is to get the user to convert and use your product and/or service. The best way to do this is to link your ad to a landing page where users can navigate with as little clicks as possible. Be sure not to link your ads back to your Facebook page because this will create a kind of circular navigation, confusing the user and increasing the likelihood that they will bounce from your page. Remember, users interacting with your Facebook page is a way to bring them to your site and become customers; not an end within itself.

With these helpful guidelines, you can make the most out of your social media efforts through Facebook to expertly communicate with your customers and grow your business.