I attended a meetup with my local social media club last week. We talked about Facebook marketing and how to optimize your pages, posts, and budget to increase visibility and engagement. I gave myself a little pat on the back, since I am doing most of this already!
One thing that was mentioned was paying money to gain friends. Now, this is nothing new, of course, and there are different ways of doing it, but I thought I would share my thoughts on this practice.
Lately, I have seen the Southwest Airline ticket giveaway promotion come up again through my friend’s feeds. The picture of the ‘tickets’ looks like it was designed on Microsoft Publisher and just screams fake. But people still enter! What these people don’t understand is that with a simple ‘ Like and Share to win!’ contest, pages are harvesting likes to turn around and sell them to hungry pages. How? By merging pages with your existing business page. The process is technically illegal, since you should own both pages, but I guess for a price, you technically do. The overnight, you boost your fans. other culprits include the ‘ Like this, I beat cancer’ or ‘Like this and mom will take us to Disney’.
I would never in a million years consider doing this. My current business page has less than a 100 likes, but that’s why I’m here creating content. Why would you just want a bunch of Facebook zombies that are not connected to your brand?
The other thing we discussed is spending ad dollars on promoted or sponsored posts. Now I have done this with several pages I manage and depending on the content, have gotten 5-15 new likes for $5-$10 dollars. The great thing about Facebook is that you can target your promoted post to your demographic of choice or to friends of friends, people who would likely share interests with those friends. I currently do this about once a month for either a new special, a new promotion, or some great press coverage. Make sure whatever your content, it would be something you would click on while scrolling through your feed. Make it engaging, exciting, valuable!
Fans are worth a lot of money. But they are only worth it if you’ve lured them and earned them with your content. No one is out there counting your friends. But you should be counting how your posts are received.
At the end of the day, that’s what will make your business money.
Why be negative?
I ‘like’ many business pages in my area that I know are managed by local owners. While it’s a good cost-saving practice, often, these owners have zero media or marketing training. Social media is media, and every message has to be as appropriate as publishing it in the paper.
In the last few weeks, a local restaurant has posted several times about being tired, been combative over not offering certain products and other not-so positive messages. A piece of advice that always rings true is that negative messages, such as bad news or negative posts, are so much more likely to receive interactions from fans. Why? Well, if you saw statuses like this, would you like them?
Of course I don’t ‘like’ someone being pooped about prepping. Do I ‘like’ that they don’t use cheap meat? Well, I would hope so!
Here are my suggestions for editing these posts
1. We take pride in the quality of ingredients we serve our customers! Our beef is marinated in kiwi juice for hours, providing a tender filling with no added sugar or additives.
2. After a long night of prepping, we are ready to see you here tomorrow! Here is a picture of what we have in store for you!
Do you see how the language changes the sentiment entirely? It makes me feel like you appreciate your customers, that you strive to provide the best quality product and that you are working your tail off to provide a superior product. Do I ‘like’ this? I would!
Always think of how you can take the positive approach and watch your engagement numbers increase!
Leave a comment
Filed under Tips for Business Owners
Tagged as facebook, facebook marketing, local restaurants, Marketing and Advertising, negative comments, Negative Messages, small business., social media, status updates