Does your business know as much about Facebook as it should?
It’s a bit of a shock when Facebook suspends your business page. When you have no idea why, getting answers from Facebook is nigh on impossible and you are losing business opportunities every day.
This happened to a small business in Derbyshire which found to its horror that Facebook had suspended its page for breaking its rules on photos. What rules, you may ask?
Facebook is a complicated beast. Rules on competitions, covers and advertising; complex algorithms which run your newsfeed, hidden features to attract customers. A complicated beast which businesses insist on diving into unaware of the dangers and opportunities.
So how much do you know about Facebook? And do you need to know more to save you wasted time and business disaster? Answer these questions and find out. Answers at the end.
1. Are you allowed to include your website address or phone number in the (cover) photo at the top of your page?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Yes, as long as you don’t say ‘call’, “go to our” or other call-to-action words.
2. How many of the fans of your business page see your page updates?
a) All of them
b) About 16% at a rough guess
c) Hardly any of them
3. Who chooses who you are friends with on Facebook?
a) You
b) You and your friends
c) Facebook
4. How often should you post on your Facebook business page?
a) Once a day
b) When you can be bothered
c) Between 3 to 8 times a day
5. Which of the following types of competitions are NOT allowed on your Facebook business page?
a) “Like our page and you will be entered into our competition”
b) “Change your profile photo to our logo and you could win a prize”
c) “Share this status on your page and you could win some free stuff”
6. When someone complains about your business on your Facebook page, should you…
a) Delete it immediately
b) Debate the issue with them so they see your point of view.
c) Ignore it. Their message will disappear in time anyway.
7. You have a well-designed Facebook business page with lovely applications encouraging people to buy. How often will most of your fans see your page?
a) Once or twice
b) 2-5 times
c) 5 times plus
Answers:
1 a Yes, you are now but you couldn’t in March 2013. Facebook regulations then said your cover photo should not include “contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section”. Facebook removed some pages which broke these rules. It has since relaxed its restrictions but still says your cover photo cannot contain more than 20 per cent text.
2 On average, 16 per cent of your fans see your updates so (b) could be the right answer but if you’re not using your Facebook page properly, it’s more likely to be much lower. Which makes (c) the more likely answer.
3 c Facebook decides who are your friends, at least they decide which of them are your ‘real’ friends by posting only their content onto your newsfeed. Whose updates go on your newsfeed depends on how you engage with them, if you look at their profile and the types of content they produce. You have little say about it. The same goes for your business page so it’s important to know how Facebook decides who sees your content.
4 c If you want to reach your audience, you need to be posting when they’re using Facebook. That could mean up to eight times a day if you’re trying to reach an international audience.
5 a, b and c None of these competitions are allowed on a Facebook page. In fact, you’re not even allowed to run a competition on your page without using an application.
6 There’s no right or wrong answer with this one because it depends on the nature of the complaint. What is important is understanding the options, how you can use Facebook to handle it correctly and being prepared.
7 a According to Facebook statistics most people will only ever visit your Facebook page once – so you have to work hard to get them to come back.
Want to learn more about how to use your Facebook page properly – and get business? Then click here.
About the author
By Mark Saxby. Mark is one of the directors of Status Social, the East Midlands’ leading social media agency. To find out more about what Status Social does, click here.
Read MoreWhy should my business blog?
Do you know that businesses which blog weekly are 66% more likely to get customers than those who don’t? Yet so few businesses blog in the first place. It’s easy to see why…
“We haven’t got anything to blog about.”
“We are not very good at writing.”
“We haven’t got the time.”
“Nobody will want to read it anyway.”
Just a few of the common excuses when it comes to why businesses don’t blog – yet the advantages for your business of writing a blog are massive:
It can improve your chances of being found on Google Search engines love changing websites. The more activity on your website, the more chances of it appearing higher in Google. A weekly blog is a sign to search engines that your website is not static. Status Social provided blogs for a tourism website that wasn’t in the first ten pages of Google. It’s now second behind Wikipedia thanks largely to short weekly blogs. Not a penny was spent on search engine optimisation.
It can bring people to your website Your website can’t go out and grab people to make them look at it. Sometimes you need to give them a reason to come. Writing something that will draw people in followed by a strong call-to-action at the end of your blog often leads to increased traffic.
It can give you credibility You may be good at what you do but how do you prove it? Writing a blog is a great opportunity to show that you know what you’re talking about. So when your website gets visitors they can see that you really are an expert because you can write about the subject with authority.
It provides social media content Often the biggest challenge for businesses when it comes to social media is what content to put out on their channels. Your blogs are a wonderful source of social media material, and they can often be promoted via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc, again and again, driving people to your website.
Writing a business blog is an investment. Yes, it will take time but that time is being spent on growing your business. Do you need to think again about blogging?
About the author
Mark Saxby is an award-winning journalist whose blogs have generated more than 90,000 hits. He also runs Blogging for Business workshops. See more details about the workshops here.
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