Using Facebook effectively can help many small businesses build an online presence and use the natural SEO aspect of social media to increase their brand awareness. When it is misused, however, the consequences are a sluggish growth of social media, and a negative perception of your website business. Since most search engine marketing people want to avoid this fate, here is the final part in this series of mistakes for small businesses to avoid on Facebook.

These last two mistakes we’ll mention have less to do with your social media interactions, and more to do with how your SEMs are running the shop when it comes your online business’ media. These mistakes? Poor metrics and planning.

Facebook has expanded its range when it comes to the type of information you can find out about your page. In the Facebook “Insights” you can see everything from how many people are discussing your page, to what city has the highest number of readers. Why, then, would you post a vanity metric like, “We gained 5 followers this week! Woohoo!” It’s nice to know, but it doesn’t mean much if they “Like” the page, and then ignore it. Post the valuable numbers that lend weight to the success of your social media interactions on Facebook, or eventually get called to the carpet for giving bogus information.

Poor planning is another monster the SEM should have defeated when the page went live. Somewhere on your page should be a set of house rules that determine how you are going to treat your social media fans. If there are no rules, you have no basis to act, or react to a hostile situation, and this could be very detrimental, not just to your Facebook page, but to your website business’ brand reputation. Get some rules, tuck them into the “info” section, and have a precedence set, so your fans know the boundaries they cannot cross.

Following the tougher posts about Facebook tone and scheduling, we’d like to explore some topics of mistakes SEMs can make when it comes to social media etiquette. A written conversation, unless they are between two close friends, does not have an established tone for sarcasm, irony or even wit. Unfortunately people can forget this while writing comments on a fan page. As the search engine marketing representative for your online business, you should NEVER forget, though.

Two ways to turn off fans to your brand and website business are simple social media etiquette practices. The first is to try and avoid deleting comments from your fans. Engagement is a vital part of the social media experience, and if you delete comments (inflammatory ones, especially) without trying to communicate with the fan first, then you are missing out on a chance to show your company’s desire to connect with the audience, as well as the chance to make an irate customer feel a bit better. Also, if you keep doing this, your fans will notice, and then they will leave.

The second thing you can do to drive off potential fans is to turn off the comments section on your page. The whole point of a Facebook page is to engage the community of your website business’ social media platform, and to increase the awareness of your brand and the “coolness” of its employees. Turning off the ability for your fans to have discussions inhibits that growth, and turns your social media into a soapbox where you brag about what you’re doing without listening or looking for feedback. It’s pretty rude to have a one-sided conversation, by society’s standards, so don’t do it with your social media.

Using Facebook effectively can help many small businesses build an online presence and use the natural SEO aspect of social media to increase their brand awareness. When it is misused, however, the consequences are a sluggish growth of social media, and a negative perception of your website business. Since most search engine marketing people want to avoid this fate, here is the next part in this series of mistakes for small businesses to avoid on Facebook.

In this post, we’ll discuss the difference between Twitter and Facebook, and the easily-abused power of scheduling tools.

Facebook and Twitter have different audiences and styles of communication. While you can post, reply and re-Tweet numerous times in the large flow of conversation on Twitter, if you tried that on the Facebook style of social media communication (which are a contained conversation separated by posts), there is a strong possibility you will get your page un-friended, or blocked by turned-off fans. The type of post matters, too. Hashtags, and truncated sentences work for Twitter, but Facebook…not so much. Approach your audiences in the correct style, and you can be sure to gain a loyal following.

While you’re building your website business’ social media and online presence, you will eventually want to check out, or possibly use, a social media scheduling tool to assist you. Please keep the aforementioned point of audiences in mind, and be wary of your scheduling times, too. While some people may enjoy seeing one hundred posts from your page, most will gloss over them if they aren’t personalized, or come around too frequently. Scheduling tools do allow a measure of freedom for the SEM in charge, especially  in controlling the time of the posts, so take advantage of that option, too.

Social media, as a whole, is a fun and interesting way for a small online business to start building up its brand awareness. For the most part, it is free, and easy to understand, making it accessible to anyone with an interest in using these types of platforms to improve their website business. When it comes to Facebook, it is remarkably easy to abuse your page with some common mistakes that could damage your brand awareness. In the next few posts, we’ll explore some common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to their Facebook pages.

The two we will tackle today are herd mentality and scheduling issues. Both of these are common mistakes that get overlooked, not just by small online businesses, either.

Herd mentality, peer pressure, you may have heard these terms when it comes to things like teenage drinking and smoking, but it applies to your SEMs creating a Facebook page for your website business, too! If you’re going online, “because everybody is doing it,” without a concrete strategy for using social media to build your online presence, then you’re truly not much more different than a teenager smoking to fit in with their peers.

The second is a matter of scheduling, once you get online.

Once you get your online business on a social media site, you should build a fan base with interesting and intelligent posts. You should also use your social media online presence as a way of connecting with your audience. If you post too many inconsequential things, you’re spamming your audience, and they will lose interest quickly. Plan a schedule, stick to it.