If you have an online store, being on Facebook is a must. It has great marketing potential, it’s building your company’s image, it’s a great channel for communicating with your customers. Running an online store’s fan page is not easy. So It’s worth seeing what are the unforgivable sins on a Facebook profile?
Here is a shortlist of what NOT to do:
1. rarely is bad, but too often – is even worse!
Quality, not quantity. Adding a dozen or so posts a day will irritate your fans and have a bad effect on your reach. Even the most loyal fan won’t like or comment on all your posts, and a profile with unresponsive posts doesn’t look good. Don’t overdo it in the other direction either. You can’t create a profile and not run it. Is this your business working or not? Customers of online stores often browse their social profiles before shopping there – they can’t go to a place with nothing. Therefore, if you don’t have time, do a little but do it well – schedule your posts to be published, for example, once a week. What you certainly can’t leave out – is to answer your fans’ questions, respond when they want to interact.
2. you won’t sell anything at 4 a.m.
The grave sin – publishing posts at the wrong time. You risk the posts not having interaction and not reaching the right audience. Don’t publish sales posts when your potential customers are at work… they have neither the time nor the desire to shop then. Not sure what times to publish? The solution is simple – open the statistics on your fan page – you will find there a chart, from which you will learn at what times your fans are active. Plan the publication of your posts for the hours when they are most active – you will be sure that your posts will not end up in a vacuum.
3 – What should we do with this post?
You’ve chosen a photo from a beautiful session, you’ve created an dream advertising text, you’ve added a catchy slogan… and nothing. Somewhere, on the other side, someone saw this photo, maybe even admired it… and nothing. Why did “nothing” happen? Your mistake is the lack of any incentive to act, and you have a lot of possibilities – add a link to your store’s website (CTA) button to your profile, use the “Check in” option in the content, or contact option via Messenger, configure the answer assistant, attach links to the products you write about. Every now and then Facebook adds new functionalities – it is worth to be up-to-date and use all the incentives to interact with the client.
4 – Don’t pretend you didn’t see it!
Everyone who is active on your profile, who speaks up – deserves to be noticed. It may happen that his/her words will not be flattering, that he/she will accuse you of a mistake – it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not – you should answer him/her. Unanswered questions will alienate those who find their way to your profile. You certainly won’t make a good impression. However, you can do even worse – delete unfavorable comments – we do not advise that – the people who you spoke to will be noticed by others… You have to take full responsibility for your company. Of course, there will be customers who, with their words, will give you high blood pressure and inflow of negative emotions – but never succumb to them by writing back – be factual, apologize (if you have something to apologize for), offer a solution to the problem.
5 – Don’t spam!
Let’s get one thing straight – Facebook is not for selling – its marketing potential is just an added value. The main purpose of Facebook is to build connections, community, networking, opportunities for interaction. All this can result in sales, but it has to happen naturally… so don’t spam your fans with posts focused solely on sales – they’ll treat you as an activator standing at their door several times a day and at some point, they’ll decide not to open that door anymore. Build community – plan posts about the industry you’re in; write about problems your company or product solves, put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer. There are many topics, if the conversation between you is attractive – the customer will find the buy now button flawlessly on their own.
