10 Tips for Best Practice on your Facebook page: Part 1

We’re very excited to have a sneak preview of Red Kite Communications’ upcoming e-Book Facebook course, which will be launching in April 2013.  Our guest blogger, Catherine, has dug out some excerpts from her course – which goes on to give you loads more advice on how to get the best out of your Facebook page.  And she’s promised us a discount especially for you guys when it goes on sale.

10 Tips for Best Practice on your Facebook page: Part 1

Before you even start worrying about what to post, and how to create engaging content for your audience, you need to learn a few simple, but important rules – these will set you up with best practice techniques so you look professional before you’ve even posted a thing.  Get these right and you’re well on your way to a good-looking Facebook page.

1 Maximum 3 statuses a day

Research shows that too many status updates will irritate the people whose feeds you appear in. 

When should you post, then? Research shows between 1-4pm.  How about one early, after 9am, for Facebook users who wake up and check their feed, or do so on arriving at work, or having got the kids off to school.  Then one between 1-4pm.  And if you really need to, one at 5ish, or an evening one at 9pm for sofa-slugs.  But make that a fun one!

2 Always Respond

Try and ‘like’ at least one comment from each individual (don’t ‘like’ every single one or that looks a bit automated.) - you don’t need to respond to every single point, but stay in the conversation or those fans may not bother responding to you next time. 

Get to know them...social media is for being sociable, for engaging, for sharing, for chatting, for getting in on the conversation. 

3 No Swearing

I decided on a strict no swearing policy for Red Kite, and I adhere to it for my clients – do find your natural ‘voice’ but steer clear of swearing  I explore all the issues in a blog post on minding your language, so I’d love to know your thoughts over there.

But the key thing is this - your Facebook page should always be a reflection of your professional values. 

4 No competitions directly on Facebook

Seriously?!  Seriously. Facebook are pretty strict about you using your Facebook page to do promotions for your company.  Ultimately, if they think you are not abiding by their terms and conditions they can terminate your page.  The chances of that happening are slim – but why risk it?

Don’t worry – you can still talk about your competitions and promotions on Facebook – but host them and get people to enter elsewhere - your blog is the perfect place. 

You can read the full Ts & Cs here: Facebook Promotions Guidelines

5 Remove the link from your text before you post your status.

When you add a link to your Status box, and press return, Facebook will generate an image from that link for you to edit before you post.  Write your accompanying status if you want to add something, but delete the messy URL before you post. 

It doesn’t look good, so get rid of it!

Stay tuned for the next 5 tips next week, and why not come and tell me your Facebook page, at my Facebook page? I look forward to meeting you there

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