Facebook has a promise that it has made to businesses. It’s not
an official promise in writing anywhere on the site. It’s an
implied promise. “We have the attention of the masses. If you want
to get in front of them, we’re the biggest game in town.”
The unfortunate reality is that the
majority of businesses, particular small and medium localized
ones, are completely missing out on the potential benefits of
their Facebook page. It’s not all about the page, but that’s a
good place to start and the best venue through which to have
control over your own destiny.
Here are some signs that your social media strategy has your page
operating at a low level. Don’t be discouraged – the vast majority
of pages out there are feeling the same types of pains you are.
The good news is that with a little help, businesses can make a
swift turnaround and find success. It just takes understanding the
realities of Facebook marketing.
1. Your Engagement Ratio and/or Total Engagers Are Low
As we’ve said in the past, the total number of fans is such an
unimportant number that it’s not even funny. It’s all about reach,
but that’s another story altogether. You can tell a lot about the
effectiveness of any page by looking at two numbers up at the top.
The number of people “talking about this” compared to the number
of total likes is your engagement ratio. This is the most
important of the two parts when it comes to reaching more people
through Facebook. In the instance above, there are 84 out of 5,737
people actively engaged with the posts coming out of this Facebook
page, yielding a 1.5% engagement ratio. This is bad, but in many
ways it’s because the engagement ratio in the automotive industry
in general is bad, average around 1.75%.
The second part of the equation is the total number of people
talking about the page. If 10 people are talking about a page that
has a mere 50 fans, then the 20% engagement ratio isn’t going to
help very much.
It’s important to understand the dynamic here, though. Some would
think that having a ton of fans and a lot of people talking about
it at a low ratio is fine, but it’s not. It hurts the page’s
overall ability to allow the posts to be seen by locals. In other
words, if a page has 100,000 fans and 2,000 people talking about
it, then it has a low 2% ratio but a good total number. However,
and this is often the hardest aspect of all this to understand,
that low engagement ratio is still hurting the page and minimizing
the potential. It’s possible to reach more local people on a page
like this:
This page has fewer than the 2,000 people talking about the
hypothetical 100,000 fan Facebook page, but it has a much higher
potential to reach people, particularly the locals, because of the
15.1% engagement ratio. Facebook can see statistically that people
are much more likely to like and engage with the content when it’s
presented to them and it makes advertising and promoting the page
much easier as a result.
More importantly, it allows for localization of the promotions at
a massive scale. 157 people have engaged with this page recently,
but a ton more locals were able to see the posts and be exposed to
the messages as a result. Take a look:
As a result of getting the
right type of local
fans and operating a properly-structured advertising and
promotions campaign, we are able to target a lot more than just
those 1,040 fans who have liked the page.
Anyone can see what the engagement ratio is on a page simply by
looking at the public numbers. In the automotive industry, the
average is 1.75%. Anything over 4% is considered adequate. We
strive to hit and stay above 10%, though we’ve seen some that
sustain 30%+. It won’t last forever, but keeping it that high for
a month or two means epic levels of exposure for the business
messages.
2. There are Irrelevant Images on Your Wall
You shouldn’t have pictures of cats on your wall unless you’re a
veterinarian. You shouldn’t have pictures of childhood memories on
your wall unless you’re an individual.
That’s the point, right? Businesses post irrelevant things to
their walls because they were likely told by some social media
guru to try to fit in, to post viral images and ask questions that
have nothing to do with business in order to get people to engage
with your business page.
Here’s a quick tip: people don’t want to engage with you over
irrelevant posts. They already have plenty of friends and family
filling their news feeds with such things.
Here’s a more important tip: you can get much more engagement by
actually being transparent, relevant, and posting the type of
content that has to do with your business. It’s a hard concept to
understand for some reason, but when a car dealer posts images of
cool cars, they’re staying relevant. When they post images from
the local area, they’re staying relevant. When they post
Facebook-only oil change specials or intriguing trade ins that
just hit the floor, they’re staying relevant.
When they stay relevant, they have an opportunity to fulfill the
purpose of the page’s existence. When they stay relevant, they’re
able to fulfill the promise that was implied when people liked the
page in the first place.
People like business pages for one of two reasons:
They were interested in the industry and wanted to have a
source on Facebook for things pertaining to that industry, from
localized specials to interesting bits of information that can
help them.
They were coaxed to like the page for bizarre reasons (we covered this recently).
Not a single person woke up and said, “I want to see funny cat
pictures and reminisce about my childhood today. I think I’ll find
a local business on Facebook and follow them to satisfy this
need.”
Stop trying to fit in. Your Facebook page should be designed to
stand out. Don’t chum up to your fans. Inform them. Educate them.
Amaze them. Give them information about things that relate to your
business.
3. You’re Trying to Coax People to Like Your Page with Games or
Giveaways
I just posted about this yesterday so I’m not going to rehash it
now.
Read: Why
Irrelevant Giveaways and Games Are Killing Your Facebook Page
4. You’re Not Getting Engagement on Individual Posts
Sorry for all the purple – trying to block out identifying
content to focus on the point of this. It’s a stereotypical
business Facebook page – 1300 likes but very few people liking,
commenting, or sharing the posts themselves. In this example,
there was a post that had 13 likes and another with 11 in the last
month, but he majority had 0, 1, or 2.
There are going to be duds. It’s not possible for every post to
be successful, but most of them should be. You should be averaging
around 1% engagement on each post. In the example below, the page
has around 900 likes, which means that on average 9 interactions
should be happening with each post (likes, comments, and shares).
It got 37 likes. This is good because some posts on the page are
under the 1% mark with only a handful of likes. Some will do well,
particularly those that resonate with the local community the way
this one did. Some will not do as well. Keeping as consistent as
possible is the key. Unfortunately, most pages are performing
consistently poorly.
5. You’re Not Finding the Right Mix of Conversation and
Conversion
This is the only component of Facebook marketing that takes real
skill and analysis. Everything else takes a little, but playing
with the algorithm, monitoring the results, and tweaking the
strategy are all part of finding the right mix between
conversation and conversion.
Conversation is the fun stuff. Again, no cat pictures, but for a
car dealer to get conversations going, they’ll want to post
content that isn’t directly businesses related but that is still
relevant to the industry. A Chevy dealer might post pictures of
the new Corvette, for example. A Seattle dealer might post images
(or better yet, ask their fans to post images) of the Space
Needle. These fun posts get the community involved and allow your
overall Facebook footprint to be as big as possible.
The conversion posts are all business. They’re talking about the
big sale this weekend. They’re talking about the brake special
from the website. They’re highlighting and individual used car
that is just too amazing to miss. These get less engagement
(normally but not always) but are the real reason you’re on
Facebook in the first place. It’s not all about branding. You can
increase business as a result of using social media and these are
the posts that do it for you.
The two types of posts go hand in hand and finding the right mix
is the tough part. You need to “earn” the right to post conversion
content by posting enough high quality conversational content.
It’s an algorithm play as well as an audience play, which means
that you have to play with it. Too much conversation and you’re
not getting a relevant message out to increase business. Too much
conversion and people will shut you out, making your posts
virtually invisible.
The example above was all about sales. Everything they were
posting was about conversion which meant that very few people were
actually seeing the posts. The opposite is no more useful; getting
all kinds of conversations going without affecting business does
nothing to help grow.
* * *
There are other bad things as well as good things that are going
on with pages, but these are the easiest way to tell in a glance
whether or not you’re being effective. Feel free to contact me if
you have any questions or to find out what we can do to help you.
http://soshable.com/5-signs-that-your-facebook-page-sucks/
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