So Facebook recently updated its mission statement, “To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Today, Facebook can do things that people and businesses would have never dreamed of about a decade ago. While the social media giant has undoubtedly altered people’s personal and social lives drastically (digitally at least), only 4 in 10 businesses see their marketing initiatives on the platform to be fruitful (purely from the ROI perspective).

Over the years, Facebook has changed a lot since it first entered the business marketing landscape. And with these changes some things are sure to get redundant. However, not all businesses and marketers are paying enough attention to what has changed on this world’s largest social media marketing website. Some of them are too tied up to keep themselves up-to-date with the platform’s frequent updates, and others just don’t pay enough attention. As a result, in their Facebook marketing campaigns, marketers are still doing things that do not make sense anymore. They still follow an outdated strategy.

Therefore, through this post, we decided to help you identify 13 things in your Facebook marketing campaign that you are horribly wrong about. Hopefully, after carefully reading this post, you should be able to renew your promotional practices on Facebook.

So, are you ready?

LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS DECISION, YOUR FACEBOOK MARKETING STRATEGY SHOULD BE A WELL INFORMED ONE.

# 1 – Just creating a Facebook business page suffices.

This is THE BIGGEST mistakes that businesses make. Thinking that your Facebook marketing strategy is just about setting up a business page on the website is very wrong. It’s not enough to just create a page and post regularly on it. Yes, keeping your Facebook page up to date is important, but it’s not enough. You need to be two things: 1) Engaging and 2) Responsive. You must publish content on your page which attracts and engages your target audience. And similarly, you must be very responsive and interactive with your target audience. If you are responsive to your audience’s queries, you will be awarded with a “Very responsive to messages” badge by the social media giant. And the more engaged is your audience, the more likely your page is to receive positive reviews.

So what to do instead?

You should not take your Facebook brand page as one-time setup activity. That’s not how you achieve long-term results on this social media website. Instead, treat your Facebook page as a dedicated customer service platform. Keep your target audience informed. Entertain them. Respond to their questions and messages in a timely fashion. And most importantly, “engage” your community with meaningful and useful content.

# 2 – Posting too much content will ensure higher engagement.

In fact, the studies suggest findings contrary to this belief. The more you post on Facebook, the lesser engagement you attain. Take a look at the below shown chart:

As you would notice, the more number of followers you have on your Facebook page, posting over frequent content on your page can adversely impact the performance of the page. So, say if you are posting every day, then you may receive about one sixth of the engagement than those pages that post only once or twice a week.

So what to do instead?

The trick is to not to overwhelm your Facebook fans. Be very choosy about what you are posting on your page. Your page followers already are exposed to a huge ocean of content in their timelines. So, you must re-think your Facebook content strategy. You should spend more time on creating better Facebook posts than publishing a lot of posts. Focus on quality, and not the quantity of posts.

# 3 – Facebook marketing has nothing to do with SEO.

Quite often, the online marketers, when ask what SEO means, would only refer to search engines like Google and Bing. What they don’t understand is that the web is a hyper-connected space. Each and every website is interconnected in one way or the other. But, what marketers need to realize is that not only is Facebook an important part of the search presence on Google, the social media
platform in itself is a very comprehensive social search engine.

This is what search engines like Google and Bing keep saying:

So what to do instead?

You should consider your Facebook business page, just like your official website. You must optimize it with appropriate and relevant information. Include and target all your important keywords in your Facebook page description as well as regular content. Also, make a vanity URL of your Facebook page.

# 4 – Facebook emphasizes on recency of your content, when displaying it in your user’s newsfeed.

Like Google, Facebook uses a very complicated algorithm when deciding what to show on a user’s timeline. Marketers generally believe that Facebook will show what they have most recently posted on their pages. However, in fact, Facebook emphasizes on the relevance on the content and not the recency. Also, a friend’s content is prioritized over a page’s content in a user’s news feed.

So what to do instead?

The more meaningful content you post on your page, the more engaging it will become. And the most engaging content gets an automatic bump in your target audience’s time lines. Therefore, your Facebook strategy should focus on delivering meaningful, engaging, customized and highly targeted
content. Invest time in bringing up the quality of the posts. Consider putting a significant budget behind your content to achieve optimal engagement and visibility.

# 5 – Facebook desktop strategy alone suffices.

Facebook is accessed more from mobile devices than from desktop or laptop devices. Over 90% of the Facebook users access it on their mobile phones. As per a recent study, out of 1.23 billion daily active Facebook users, about 1.15 billion using Facebook app on their phones.

So what to do instead?

Don’t design your Facebook brand content primarily for Desktop users. Re-think your content creation strategy on Facebook. Create mobile-first content. Post videos and assume that they will watch them without sound first. Emphasize on snackable content for your Facebook page. Something that your page followers can consumer, like, share on-the-go.

# 6 – The best way to get more followers on Facebook is to buy them.

In order to be a successful marketer on Facebook, you need to have a loyal follower base that is highly engaged every time you publish a new post and also share them with their friends. But,  many startups think that they will be able to attain such a follower base by buying paid likes for their pages. And they even rely on the third party sellers who sell page likes in packages. What these companies fail to understand is that these sellers are essentially click farms. They give you page likes through fake accounts mostly. So, if you get paid likes for your page through third parties, then the chances that you will get real engagement on your page are too thin.

So what to do instead?

Don’t go for paid likes from such third party sellers. Facebook has a specific algorithm which helps it decide what content is more engaging and useful for your followers. It has nothing to do with the
number of fans you have. So, over time, if Facebook notices that your page has a huge number of fans but the engagement is not there, it will put restrictions on the discoverability of your page’s content. There, you should focus on creating compelling, useful and engaging content on your page. And only put a paid budget behind your post if it generates some level of engagement organically.

# 7 – Facebook marketing is only for B2C online marketers.

A recent study showed that 7 in 10 Facebook users say that they use the website for professional purposes. Facebook is a place where your customers want to avail different types of information. They want both professional and personal information.

So what to do instead?

If you are B2B marketer, your choice of social media marketing platforms is not just limited to LinkedIn. Facebook is as important and vital for your brand promotions as LinkedIn or any other dedicated B2B platforms. You need to have a customized strategy for your Facebook audience.  Make your content relevant and compelling for your B2B audience on Facebook. Have the right type of content reach the right people at the right time to gain the maximum exposure and engagement.

# 8 – Hashtags are not as effective on Facebook as they are on Twitter.

Not only do the Facebook users use hashtags in their posts, they also use them to search for relevant
information on the platform. Hashtags help the users find specific information easily and quickly on Facebook. For marketers, using hashtags appropriately means that they get a chance to be a part of the trending conversations. On the other hand, using too many hashtags can also adversely affect the page’s engagement.

So what to do instead?

You should be choosy about how to use hashtags. Only use them when they are the most appropriate and meaningful. Don’t overuse them in your page content. So, feel free to use hashtags on Facebook, but don’t overdo or overthink it.

# 9 – Facebook is used the most by customers of all ages.

It would be an ideal scenario for the social media giant that people of all ages use it the most. However, it is not the reality. Facebook is the most popular amongst the older customers, but only 33% of the millennials use Facebook. Most of them use Instagram as their preferred social media website.

So what to do instead?

You must be aware of the user preference trends on Facebook. Although younger users may prefer Facebook less, they’re more likely to follow brands than the older generations. Therefore, it is important that you understand your audience’s preferences and adjust your Facebook marketing strategies accordingly to achieve optimal engagement.

# 10 – Facebook advertising is more relevant to bottom-of-the-funnel marketing.

Contrary to the above statement, Facebook advertising can be effective at each stage of the marketing funnel.

So what to do instead?

Just like your traditional advertising campaigns, your Facebook advertising strategy should also be based on your overall marketing funnel. The middle and the bottom of the funnel should be focused on remarketing or retargeting ads on Facebook. These are the users who are most likely to convert and pay to you. And top of the funnel should be focused more around content needs fulfilment. Here you should mix your organic and paid campaigns to broaden the brand knowledge among your target user base on Facebook. Again, your focus at all stages in the funnel should be on engagement, and conversions would follow automatically.

# 11 – Facebook ads are only to get more followers or to get more post likes.

Contrary to the above statement, the recent reports suggest that a vast majority of Facebook advertisers spends on Facebook to get more website conversions. Facebook offers different types of ad products based on the goals of the advertisers. But, the advertisers are very limited in the knowledge of these different types of ad products.

So what to do instead?

When choosing an ad type of Facebook, think of it from a user’s point of view. Your Facebook followers’ newsfeeds are bombarded with such page likes or website conversion ads. So, you don’t want to be a part of the noise do you? To make your page and brand stand out, select the ad options that best match your goals and also your audience’s preferences.

# 12 – When advertising on Facebook, spray ad pray.

Yes, it’s true that Facebook allows you to pay per click. This means that you have a complete control over your budget. But, that doesn’t mean you should not focus on ad targeting to ensure it appears in front of the audience that is actually a right fit for your product or brand.

So what to do instead?

Most advertisers on Facebook have an aim to reach the maximum number of followers through their ads. However, the emphasis instead should be on ROI of the ads by targeting those users who actually fit your buyer persona.

# 13 – Advertisers should spend the most on video ads.

It’s true that the importance of video ads has increased on Facebook overall. The budget on video ads has increased by over 150% in the last couple of years. However, recent studies suggest that video ads only make up 12% of total ad spend on Facebook.

So what to do instead?

Facebook continues to encourage brands and users to post more videos. But that doesn’t mean that brands should only push video content in their ads. Why? Video content takes more resources and efforts. Therefore, marketers must be careful about using them in their strategies.

To conclude…

Facebook marketing and advertising is full of such misconceptions and malpractices. Be careful and not fall victim to them. Get a complete view of how Facebook marketing works, both organically and through paid campaigns. Make sure you know the best practices about Facebook marketing and advertising. Not sure what they are? Leave your details in the comments below or give a shoutout at info[at]e-intelligence[dot]in.