I was having a conversation over e-mail with a friend who works with a digital marketing agency in Hong Kong. We were sharing with each other our experiences so that we could both get better at what we do. One thing we both agreed on is the biggest pitfall for a lot of businesses when it comes to building their communities of Facebook using official pages. The biggest mistake you can make is getting stuck in Marketing/PR mode in your Facebook page. The truth of the matter is this: building communities doesn’t just mean running promos or raffles! It also means a lot of customer service which will involve various departments like operations and customer service.
Here are 2 basic tips that we can share:
Marketers usually get worked up with building the page and optimizing it by adding landing pages and apps. However they forget about it after several weeks. Don’t get too caught up with the technology and try to focus on the core reason why you’re getting into social media. Remember this: The Facebook Page is in the front lines dealing with your existing and potential customers. What does this mean? It means that customer service is inherent in the platform. You can’t have a good Facebook Page without awesome customer service. People will ask questions and you have to be ready to answer them. You can’t leave them hanging with unresolved issues and questions because they will come back to haunt you later when you come up with your promos and contests.
When you’re in the initial stages of setting up the page for your company make sure to call a meeting with different departments concerned so that you can all be on the same page. If you’ll outsource the page to a supplier give them a direct line to customer service so that they have the correct answers. If you’ll do it in-house set a standard time frame on when your agents will be checking and moderating the pages.
One company that we used to do consultancy work for asked for “resolved cases” as a success metric. This means we would track how many customers questions or concerns were answered by the team on Facebook. I think this has equal value to page impressions, unique views, and shares.
No one knows the flaws and weaknesses of your campaigns and products more than you. This is actually a good thing because you can be prepared when people ask about them. Create some form of FAQ for the team who’s moderating the page. Ask yourselves the hard questions, list them down, run them through your PR team, and put it all in paper. This way you cut down the response time and you also have a standard answer.
Another important thing is to plot out your content strategy. Don’t just post random things on Facebook in random intervals. You should be regularly posting content to keep the community buzzing and happy. You have to do this in order to raise social capital so you convert more of the fans into actual customers. Create an editorial calendar that will offer value to your readers.
You can increase the success rate of your social media campaigns drastically through rigorous planning. Don’t just jump into it without having any plan or blueprint.
Having FAQs or some sort of documentation pages can cut off user response since they can get their answer on those pages.
I also agree about the contents. Having quality contents will keep your users interested and happy.
As of facebook, i don’t trust them.
What I don’t like about Facebook is that it doesn’t have a good archiving system. Anything you put in there is temporary so it will be good for promos, but not for the most substantial and relevant information that are archived more effectively by forums/fora or multiply sites.
That’s why you just can’t rely on Facebook for everything. This is also a big mistake made by a lot of SME’s here in the PH. They think Facebook is “THE” answer to all of their problems.
A lot of businesses just advertise
Find us on Facebook…. like where?
dapat may URL or page name atleast
I agree a Facebook page should have a goal, i mean sure you can make one just to have one but whats the point.
Some may use it to connect to their customers, other just to gather their followers in one area thats easily accessible and so they can discuss. Some try to use it for customer feedback.
I wonder how many businesses even understand why facebook is so popular, its because its social, people want to know what their friends are doing. So make your business concept social on facebook as a way to gain more customers.