4 Top Facebook Mistakes by Companies in 2012

1. Treat Facebook to push Press Releases:

More often than not companies push their press releases intended for newspapers and magazines on Facebook. We have seen this become as bad as publishing scanned images of the press releases.
Companies need to realize that their real job begins after getting the likes on Facebook. If they can activate interactivity it will help them get more reach and engagement.
Our own research proves that the two most important ways to increase engagement on Facebook are
Questions/Polls and Image led posts preferably with a link or again a question.

2. Not leveraging offline paid and own media:

All of us would have noticed numerous TV and newspaper ads of large Hotels, online portals and what have you; some do not have any Facebook or social integration while some just have a Facebook icon and a text stating- find/follow us on Facebook. The question is: Who in the world has time to search for your brand on Facebook and then follow. Forget about ascertaining an official account. Common sense: write your Facebook URL everywhere.
Companies invest huge monies on offline media to be seen by an enormous volume of people- why not integrate Facebook identity for free?

Second: Why are the companies not integrating their Facebook presence with their own media, viz: email signatures, their websites, their envelopes, the bills and the packaging of the products?
This is free exposure and in terms of RoI it would be worth a lot of dollars that companies would have otherwise wasted on Facebook.

3.NoT having a common integrated promotion strategy–

A famous pizza company promotes it’s coupons everywhere including Facebook as well. People who are using tablets or phones may want to share the coupon code or just want to call and order- But the coupons work only when placed online. Why run the risk of bad buzz on social media, why not leverage social media to make the coupons viral and accept them from all sources. Why lose customers?

4.Focus on ‘Reach’ and ‘Referral Traffic’:

If you ask me the 3 most important metrics on Facebook that companies missed in 2012; they are: 1. Reach, 2. Referral traffic and 3. People Talking About. It’s becoming difficult reaching more than 25% of the fans. Companies missed this in 2012 and continued to spend on getting likes. It will become difficult to show any RoI if companies did not move to these 3 metrics immediately.

If your brand wants to excel on facebook and want our help in crafting a well thought-out social media strategy contact saurabh@atomthought.com or visit our social media consulting arm dotConverse at www.dotconverse.com