STOP! This is the social media police! Over the next few weeks we’ll be cracking down on several misuses, un-pleasantries and downright violations of the most popular social media networks, starting with the biggest of them all, Facebook – more specifically, the Facebook Terms of Use Agreement. As we monitor our client’s Facebook pages on a daily basis, as well as peruse our own personal networks, there are several faux pas that we would like to address:

So many times, we see businesses misuse Facebook by creating friend or Group pages for their marketing efforts instead of creating business pages. Facebook Pages are the correct way to establish an effective business presence on Facebook. Creating an actual business page has several benefits:

  • More real estate for your company’s branding, via custom page tabs.  Using consistent branding throughout your page and on custom Facebook tabs increases your brand’s visual impact on Facebook users. You can also use custom tabs to accommodate your marketing efforts, such as driving email collections or driving traffic to specific landing pages.
  • The ability to assign multiple admins to manage the page. With Facebook Pages, you can have several admins to help you respond to users, manage/remove content, and adjust page settings as needed. Admins can also consist of vendors outside of your company that help you create content (much like what we do for some of our clients).
  • Transferability of page ownership, from one person to another. Every now and again, people change companies or leave the company they work for. After managing Facebook Pages for the past few years, I can tell you that Facebook Pages are a great way to keep ownership of this social media asset within the company.  Imagine if you had a friend profile, and an employee changed the password before leaving your company. They could essentially take your asset with them!
  • Leveraging targeted updates for news and events. Facebook Pages allow you either send updates to all of your fans at once (think of itas an Email blast on Facebook) or you can target the update to fans of a certain demographic (age, gender, location, etc.). This is an extremely effective, cost efficient way to get a message out to your audience. However! Do not abuse this feature, or you will see your unsubscribe numbers on the rise. Make sure the updates you send are of interest to your fans/likers, and generally no more than once a week
  • Facebook Insights. The biggest advantage of a Facebook Page over a friend profile or Group page is Insights. Facebook Pages come loaded automatically with some pretty robust analytics to measure how effective your communications are over time. If you haven’t already please make sure to take some time to view your page’s insights. You’ll be surprised how much you can find out about your audience!
  • Tag Cautiously. Another violation of the Facebook User License Agreement is unauthorized tagging of multiple users. I’ve seen many businesses and people alike post a picture or video, and then tag everyone they know in order to drive them to it. While this certainly creates buzz for your content, it is not ethical to tag someone as “in” a certain photo, and according to the User Agreement, this is a violation of privacy. A best practice we follow is to send a friendly private message asking permission from the user, or asking guests at events to sign photography waivers.
  • Keep your Contests and Giveaways OFF of Facebook, well, kind of. This one can be a bit ambiguous for marketers. A popular marketing tactic for increasing the number of users to visit/like their business’ pages is to offer an incentive, run a contest, announce a giveaway, etc. Contests/Giveaways/Lotteries are NOT to be administered on Facebook, because it is not legal to force someone to perform an action, such as commenting, liking, or posting, in order to be entered. HOWEVER, if you administer the offer completely separate from the users action on your page, you are okay. For example, using a custom Facebook tab to administer a contest is legal, because custom tabs are considered third party applications. Make sense?

Next week we’ll be looking at the DOs and DON’Ts of Facebook and the reasons behind many of Facebook’s best practices. If your business is in need of some social media reform (or since we’re the social media police: “rehabilitation”) please call us today at 239.221.2858, or email Alex Fernandez, Social Media Strategist, at Alex@Getpushing.com.

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