The number of Facebook business pages that keep popping up from a multinational brand to the shop down the road selling cat food continues to increase. But that doesn’t mean that those who have been put in charge of managing the sites understand what they should be doing any better.
I recently researched an industry in Bournemouth to pitch to a client and discovered numerous Facebook pages with very little activity. In fact only one business was regularly updating of the 15 Facebook pages I found. What was interesting was that the 14 inactive had clearly launched their page and then posted with a frenzied enthusiasm for 2 or 3 months and then got bored, the posts became less frequent until they stopped completely and then haven’t touched it since. In one instance a user had commented on a page ‘will someone please call me’, they were clearly not answering their phones and then publicly not answering their comment on Facebook- a double whammy!
Social media requires time and input and there are significant results on offer as a reward. Most companies fail because they decide on a Monday morning meeting to have a Facebook page and by Tuesday they’ve uploaded a bio from the website, a profile picture, a few images of the owners and ‘hello everyone, we’re on Facebook’, by Friday they’ve uploaded everything the company does and what it has ever done and by the following Monday they’re struggling for content, bored and when too many emails come through, it’s forgotten and their social media experience is over because it didn’t work and social media is a load of baloney! Unsurprisingly, social media requires a plan and a strategy and most importantly, knowing where you’re content is going to come from on a regular basis. What it also requires too is realistic targets, so that after 6 months of updates and interactions, you can assess whether it has been a success and what the company has archived by using social media.
Don’t embark in social media if you already know you’re not going to update your profiles with regular interesting news, don’t allow your customers to find poorly managed pages. Close down your existing pages if you know you’re never going to update it again or you’re not going to invest the necessary time. But if you’re serious about social media, make a plan and devise a strategy. How are you going to connect with your audience and what results do you expect to see?
With 50% of the UK population on Facebook and half logging in very day, you shouldn’t be dreaming of closing down your page or not getting involved!