Social media has evolved into this weird, quasi-realm of friends and advertisers, the former of which promotes the latter from time to time. Personally, I had a hard time even accepting the fact that businesses used Facebook (and Instagram, Twitter, etc.) for marketing. That is, of course, until I started doing it myself.
Bad social media marketing is like going through a parking garage in a fancy hotel and putting “Buy Used Cars Here!” flyers underneath windshield wipers of six-figure convertibles. It’s tacky, inappropriate and annoying.
To avoid being “That Brand” on Facebook and other platforms, the first step is to understand why a person may or may not follow you. Here are a few reasons why someone would objectively hate your business’ online persona to get you started:
1. What’s the point?
When I have the option of following a brand on social media, I ask myself the following: What do I gain from adding more spam on my newsfeed? Do I support this company? Do I know what this brand is?
The point is finding relevance. For example, a lot of Facebook users (as in like well over a billion) prefer following pages that are:
- Cool
- Original
- Trendy
Subjective, isn’t it? But if your page doesn’t appear to be these three things, there’s no point in following it.
2. Bad Content
Before a person likes or follows a page, he or she will likely scroll through the top few posts. And what do they find? Well, go to your company’s own page and look for yourself.
Are the top few posts more than a week old? Is the page super spammy and feels like an advertisement? Are there lots of photos? Do other followers like and comment?
Because of how protective some people (me, at least) are of their FB, they only want to follow pages that are active and publish unique content.
3. Off Base
Your page needs to have a purpose. If it exists solely because someone told you FB improves your presence, you’ve already lost.
You need to publish content that reflects your page’s goals. For instance, a lot of successful companies will send out links to interesting articles, post photos of products in use, and share interesting thoughts. Why? Because they want people to follow and interact so when they do have something important to say (a sale, promotion, event, etc.) people will see it.
It’s the pages that do the opposite (i.e. promote, promote and over-promote) that don’t get anywhere.
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