If you’re like the millions of other business owners out there using Facebook as a tool for communicating with your customers, then you’ll know that their pesky damn algorithm changes like the wind, constantly thwarting us of our God given right to free marketing, am I right?!

 

Gone are the days where we could just post our weekly discount deal and everyone from our neighbour to our work colleague to our kids best friend’s mother would see it and engage generously with us.

 

Facebook have got smarter, and therefore we need to get smarter.

 

It’s not all doom and gloom, if you focus on your content and your strategy you can still get traction… and if you’re willing to spend some of those hard earned pennies then your percentage of success will definitely increase proportionately.

 

But let’s focus on some free stuff. Here’s my Top Three Facebook DON’T’s  for the day for you to think about when next posting…

 

DON’T ONE:

DON’T post anything that can be considered Overly Promotional in Nature.

What does this mean?

 

• Don’t use call to action words – ‘Click Below’, ‘Buy Now’…
• Don’t use words indicating a sales promotion– ‘Discount’, ‘FREE’, ‘Percentage off’
• Don’t reuse ad content to post a normal post (they’re sneaky and they know you’re doing it)
• Don’t use competition and engagement words like ‘like’ or ‘share’ together. Telling people to like and share your posts to win a prize or go in a draw will definitely get your post smacked with the obscurity stick.

 

Basically Facebook did a survey of their users and the overwhelming outcome was that they wanted to see less promotional content. So save your promotional posts for that penny spending.

 

DON’T TWO:

DON’T use too many outbound links…

 

This is as much a general content strategy as it is a recent no-no. Having a few outbound links isn’t going to kill your page, but if every post is sending someone to your blog or another site then Facebook will start taking issue with it.

 

Is this because they consider it overly promotional? That’s what they say, but realistically (and understandably) Facebook want you to stay on their platform not send their users to another site or platform. That’s why they now penalise YouTube links for example, but will organically boost your direct upload or Live Videos even if it exactly the same content.

 

DON’T THREE

DON’T go Boosting your posts willy nilly!

 

Boosting posts has had a bit of a bad rap in recent years as the ability to target your customer was really bad, and there were rumours flying around that Facebook would start penalising you when you then didn’t boost your posts.

 

Cut to todays Facebook world, where we find your boost targeting options are greatly increased, but they’re still not as great as if you create an actual ad. And just as bad, your Objective choices are extremely limited.

Back up… What’s an Objective?

Your Objective is the reason you’re posting – it may be to increase engagement, it may be to click through to your website, it may be to get someone to take up an Offer. Essentially it is how Facebook decides within your target audience who is most likely to react positively to your set Objective, and if you can’t determine that effectively then once again your post may be delivered to people who just aren’t interested. Boooo!

 

Facebook is all about who engages with you. It doesn’t matter if you pay them or not, if your post is going to people who simply don’t care about it (or even worse still hit that dreaded “I’m not interested in this post” button) then you have done yourself more harm than good.

(Something else to also be aware of is that Boosted content works the same way as creating an ad. If you have too much text in your image for example then Facebook will greatly reduce or simply reject your boost request completely. 20% MAX of text in an image is the general rule. But creating great ads and images is a topic for another day…)

 

DON’T THREE summary… No boosting posts to People who like your page, and No boosting posts to People who like your page and their friends… if you need to Boost, use all the options that are available to you. But best practice is to create an ad. A little trickier I’ll admit, but far more effective.

 

So there it is, My Taking Control of your Facebook Content by using my Top Three DON’T’s for the Day!

(Next time I’ll focus on being a bit more positive I promise ?)

 

 

If you’d like any more DON’T’s, or even some DO’s, you know where I am.

‘Till next time… Jodie