Facebook Mistakes To Avoid
There are a few mistakes that a lot of marketers make while marketing on Facebook. To drive the most FREE traffic possible, you will want to avoid these mistakes, which means you first need to know what they are. Most people jump right in on Facebook and just start advertising, ending up with little to no results, or, worse, with their accounts closed! Unless you want to start new Facebook accounts from scratch every couple of months, or just give up on free traffic from Facebook, you definitely need to play by their rules. While paid advertisements on Facebook are effective, and you can get results with as little as $5 a day, it is also nice to be able to drive free traffic from the platform. After all, everything is better when it’s free, right?
Facebook is NOT an Advertising Platform
Facebook is a social network, first and foremost. While there are advertisements being served, you definitely do NOT want to just jump right in and start advertising. This will be seen as spam and is a sure fire way to get your account closed with a quickness. Your first and most important job on Facebook is to connect with your audience, and develop real friendships. Your posts should provide value to the users who read them. You can offer freebies to your followers, or just helpful information. The ultimate goal is to get the users on your friends list to know, like, and trust you. This will never happen if you are putting out a ton of promotional posts. That’s not to say that you can’t make ANY promotional posts, but you definitely want to make sure that there are more posts providing value than self-promoting posts. If you post a lot of promotional posts, you will see your audience lose interest in you faster than you even thought possible. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if you saw your post on another user’s Facebook page, would it make you like or trust them? If the answer is no, then you probably don’t want to post it.
Although people do occasionally purchase things while on Facebook, the majority of people use the platform to connect with their friends and families, and for fun and entertainment. If you are going to sell on Facebook, you’ll want to use the gentle art of persuasion to get users into your funnel. As always, you want to start by providing them something of value, for free, and once they have clicked through for that, then you can tell them about what you have to offer. You want it to be their choice that they are seeing your offer, not just on Facebook, but on any platform. You don’t want a negative Facebook experience being associated with you, or your brand.
Avoid Using Clickbait
Facebook is really cracking down on clickbait. Up until a few years ago, you could use clickbait posts to get a lot of views to your posts. Now, Facebook will remove the post, and possibly place restrictions on your ability to post. If you are using clickbait posts frequently, Facebook may even close your account. Clickbait is a post that deliberately misleads the reader, and very often is highly sensationalized, making it very tempting for people to click.
Most of us know the way it feels when you click a post that says “The Real Truth About Making Money Online” and then when you get to the site, you find out that it not only has nothing to do with making money online, but it also costs money to access the information. It’s a real mood killer, and a lot of us have unfollowed or even blocked people who post these things. At the very least, people will stop reading your posts, which is bad. That is exactly opposite the goal we are working towards, so you definitely want to avoid this altogether. Remember, we want our followers to come to know, like, and trust us.
The titles and descriptions of your posts should be accurate and truthful. The titles and description are there to help your followers decide whether they want to click through or not. This will be appreciated by your followers, and more importantly, Facebook will appreciate it. Avoiding misleading, exaggerated, and sensationalized headlines will help ensure that your posts continue being served to your audience, so they can decide of they would like to read them or not.
Facebook knows that users are going to leave their platform, but they don’t like it. If you just post a link with no explanation or other information, Facebook is most likely going to redirect the user back to Facebook. If a user clicks on your link and then comes straight back to Facebook, then they will assume that something was wrong with the information that you provided on your website. Tell your audience what to expect when they click through to your site. When you do this, they are likely to spend ore time on your site. Facebook sees this as a good thing, and will reward you with greater reach for your posts, and will also allow users to access it through their platform.
Optimize your Website
Finally, make sure that you have optimized your website. You have done all the groundwork, and Facebook users are clicking through to your website. Do you think that they are going to wait forever for your page to load? In case there is any doubt, the answer is no, they will not. You MAY get one or two random people who will wait, but most people are going to click right back over to Facebook, and never visit your site again. If you are a WordPress user, there are many plugin options available for this, both free and paid. Even outside of WordPress, there are plenty of ways to optimize the speed of your website. A quick Google search can provide you with plenty of options, many for free.
You will also want to make sure that your site is optimized for mobile devices, since most Facebook users are visiting the platform using their mobile devices. People will be turned off from your website if it is not optimized for mobile users. There are many ways you can fix this. After applying any fixes to optimize your site for mobile users, you’ll want to test it using your phone, or use an online emulator. Again, WordPress users can find many free plugins for this, or paid, if that is what they’re after. For those not using WordPress, you can search through Google or any other search engine, and find the options available.
Knowing the things that will make Facebook mad at you is only half of the battle. You also need to avoid doing these things, to keep your Facebook account alive, and for Facebook to keep serving your posts to your audience. Organic reach is getting harder and harder for those of us doing business on Facebook, so it’s always a good idea to keep up with the changes to the platform, and make sure that you’re minding their rules. By doing so, you can continue to enjoy the free traffic from the platform.
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