Sometimes, it’s knowing what not to do that is helpful. By avoiding these 5 common mistakes on Facebook, you’ll have a better chance at engaging with your current fans and attracting new fans as well.
Not Deleting the Link
Did you know that once the preview of the link shows up below your post, you can delete the link? This is one of the most common mistakes I see on Facebook. By deleting the link, it cleans up your post a lot and makes it clear where you want your fans to click.
Simple Text Posts
It used to be that you could only post text to Facebook. Those days are long gone. It’s all about visual content! Statistically, text posts get the least engagement. In addition, these posts often get relegated to the “News Ticker” and never even show up in the main newsfeed of your fans.
Long Posts
This is Facebook, not a blog. If you need to communicate a lot of information, you are better off putting it on a website and linking to it. Better yet, create a short video with the information. Unfortunately, long posts like this one will get skipped over because they are too long and are too much to consume on Facebook. Studies show that the most engaging posts are 90 characters or less.
Feeding in From Other Channels
When you feed your posts in from another channel (like Twitter), it becomes painfully clear that you are doing so. How you talk on Twitter unfortunately does not translate well to Facebook. Twitter is more about short and quick, like an instant message. It’s ok to abbreviate on Twitter because you only have 140 characters. Abbreviating on Facebook looks weird. Also, although hashtags are (allegedly) coming to Facebook, they aren’t here yet. So for now, keep your #wittyruntogethercomments off facebook. 🙂
Overtagging
When you tag 3 or more other pages in a post, it starts to look A LOT like spam. I am a huge fan of tagging other pages, but this is going a little far. When you tag this many other pages, it really starts to seem like you are just trying to get in front of their audience. Instead, when you tag a page, be sure it’s to give them credit for something you are sharing or to let them know about something they might be interested in.
Now that you know some of the most common mistakes, you can avoid them and post more engaging content. If you have any you would like to add, I would love to hear from you! Write a comment below or on our Facebook page.
