20 pitfalls to avoid when using facebook for branding

1. Indiscriminate Tagging • Nothing is more irritating than finding ourselves being tagged to something that doesn’t concern us! 1
2. Excessive Routine Group Broadcast • It will be a disaster for your brand if you use Facebook like just another broadcasting channel 2
3. Posting your Product onto Competitor’s Group or Fan Page • If the owner of the page or group reports to Facebook, you can be warned, or eventually banned! 3
4. Create a Fan Page with No Fans and No Update • What’s the use of creating a Page where the Fans have nothing to cheer about the page? Remember the content is imperative for good conversation to happen 4
5. Create a Personal Profile of your Company & Adding others as Friends • Facebook is for anyone who has a real “face”. If you are a person managing your brand, create a profile. Consequently create a Fan page for your company 5
6. Forbidding Your Fans to Share (Feedback) Anything on Page • The main activity on social media is conversation. Who wants to be your fans when only you can talk and they can’t? Your page will become just like any other mass media. 6
7. Fan Page with No Twitter, Youtube or Slideshare tabs • Fan Page is your brand’s homepage on Facebook. Leveraging its huge base to bring traffic to other platform where your brand has a presence is important 7
8. Over Crowding Your Pictures with Only Your URL www.pholan.com www.pholan.com www.pholan.com www.pholan.com www.pholan.com www.pholan.com 8 www.pholan.com www.pholan.com www.pholan.com
9. Deleting (Censoring) Negative Comments • Do not ever think people won’t notice it! It will be embarrassing if fans post the comments a 2nd time. Use every opportunity in finding a bridge from handling negative comments to communicate your brand further 9
10. Spamming by Sending Group Private Messaging • Though this may be done on a personal level, it may result in bad personal branding and affect the image of your brand which you broadcasted 10
11. Failure to Include Facebook Forecast/Growth Metrics • Forecasting and Charting growth in areas like Fan base, postings, content upload are key measurement of Social Media Branding. No measurement means no ROI! 11
12. Failure to Plan for Posting Schedule on Your Page • Forecasting and Charting of Growth in membership, postings or content upload are key measurement of Social Media Branding. No measurement means no ROI 12
13. Only 1 Administrator • Designating only one person to manage a page may not be able to cope with the job scope of monitoring feedback, updating, event management, etc. Having more administrators will add more variety in the form of human voices within the page. Moreover, your page will risk being dormant if the administrator’s profile is disabled for some reasons. 13
14. Bad Grammar in Posts or Replies • Having social conversation doesn’t necessarily means bad grammar is cool. Anyone who maintains a page represent the brand. No company wish to associate bad English as an attribute of their brand. 14
15. Lack of Monitoring through Google Analytics for Facebook link • The success rate of converting of prospects to customers from Facebook depends on analysis of web users’ behaviour on your web. Monitoring all new users from Facebook link contribute to the overall ROI of a Social Media marketing approach. 15
16. No Integration With Other Web Strategies • Having a Facebook’s page is just another channel of marketing and branding. All other web strategies must be aligned, implemented and integrated with Social Media channel eg. Customer Relationship Management system, etc 16
17. Failure to use Targeting option in FACEBOOK Advertising • Though Facebook is almost reaching 500 million users, its unique advertising preposition lies in the Targeting Option where you can select your target audience anything from gender to location to interest to even educational level. 17
18. Under Bidding in Facebook Advertisement • Plan for a monthly budget, decide how many clicks you wish to get from Facebook users, the higher the bidding for Pay-per-Click (PPC), the more occurrence your ad will appear. Bidding the minimal will never be effective for obvious reason 18
19. No Facebook Application to Engage Your Fans • Facebook is a application on social media which gives opportunity to more than 50,000 other applications. Design and Develop an application on Facebook through API to build your brand. Be creative in forming new ways for fans and prospects to interact. 19
20. No Facebook Connect From your Website • Your main corporate site will not be deemed as ready for social media if you do not have Facebook Connect. • It allows users to join your site as members by allowing their profiles to be connected. • Open ID serves a similar purpose although not as effective in lead generation. 20