There is indisputable evidence that advertising on social media, especially Facebook, can drive huge ROI for a business. There is also overwhelming evidence that if you post organically, or non-paid, you have no idea what you are doing...or what you're doing to the viability and sustainability of your business.
As the the founder of a social media marketing agency, I see this all the time. Here are four common, annoying, idiotic, ridiculous mistakes businesses make when advertising on social media that piss me off on a regular basis.
You Ignore Context
A local grocery store made a Facebook post in the middle of winter, about pork steak. It snowed the week before and the weekend after. How many people do you think are going to see that organic post and then go buy a pork steak and barbecue it outside in winter?
As a side note, this particular post tries to imply that the store owner originally invented the pork steak. They're trying to tell me they're the first ones who decided to slice pig meat. So they're the geniuses for slicing a pork shoulder, and i'm the idiot bbqing in the snow.
Point is, this is constant in the small business world. There's no rhyme or reason or current event that would be driving someone to bbq a pork steak in the middle of January or why it would be a push. It's just an ego stroke - they're posting just to be posting.
You Patronize Customers (or recommend the most expensive Bloody Mary EVER)
Another local market posted about how to make your own Bloody Mary from scratch on January 15th, a Monday. Just to recap, on a Monday afternoon these guys are trying to sell a Bloody Mary.
Here's all the ingredients they fire at you in a 30 second video; vegetable juice, pickle juice, Worcestershire Sauce, steak sauce, horseradish, lemon juice, hot sauce… we're up to easily $21 in ingredients not counting vodka. 21 bucks for 7 Ingredients in 30 seconds with directions for a Bloody Mary, posted to their FB page on a Monday. Am I ever going to convert and buy because of this particular non-paid Facebook post?
This kind of post isn't even taking the consumer journey in to account. NOBODY is going to want to run out and buy 10 different ingredients and then go make a bloody. And even if they did, they would buy Bloody Mary mix and vodka and THAT'S IT. This is just gross patronization of a customer that shows in a few different ways that this company has no idea how to talk to customers online.
You Ignore the 72-Hour Lifespan of an Organic Post
Organic posts from a business' Facebook page only live in the newsfeed for 72 hours, maximum. Let's say I own a restaurant with 11,000 Facebook fans. If I make a non-paid post about my red snapper special, and tell you to "come by and get it," that post will be seen sometime between now and three days from now. Much of the distribution will come after the special is sold out.
In reality out of those 11,000 people who liked my page, Facebook will intentionally only serve the post to 4% of them max. So maybe 500 people. Out of that 500 maybe half will even see the ad before the special runs, and even less will even be close enough and have actual interest in your ad to consider coming in. Do you hate red snapper, or just your bottom line?
You're Unclear Who Your Page Fans Actually Are
A local real estate firm has over 1,500 people that have liked their page sometime between 2002 and today. Here's the post status: "Whether you're looking for a home in the city or in the country we have several wonderful options available for viewing today. Many open today at 1 to 3." First off, what is the chance that anybody out of 1,500 FB fans are still looking for a home?
You have to first think about who your followers are. Who are the people that like your page? If these people magically showed up someday on your page, and you don't know why, don't know how, don't know where they're at in the buying cycle, what is the chance that you're going to convert ANY of them with this post? Sure, you could get lucky, but can you bet your business on getting lucky Absolutely not. That's not scalable for actual predictable growth.
This is the whole reason, right here, why people think social media marketing doesn't work. It's not that it doesn't work, it's that business owners don't get it. Business fail at digital marketing because of user-error.
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