Here are some statistics about the small businesses from the United States shared by Dan Levy, Director of small business at Facebook:

• There are more than 2 billion connections between local businesses and people.

• On an average week, there are over 645 million views of, and 13 million comments on, local business Facebook Pages.

• Approximately 70% of monthly active users in the U.S. and Canada are connected to a local business on Facebook.

As great as it sounds, marketing on Facebook is far from being easy. Many business owners make mistakes as they do not try to understand how it works and merely treats it like a promotional site for their business.

Here are some marketing mistakes businesses are making on Facebook.

1. Promoting Too Much

When people log into Facebook, they aren’t logging in to see yet another advertisement from a brand. They log in to connect and to keep in touch with their friends and family.

As a business owner and an avid Facebook user, I don’t want my newsfeed to be bombarded by advertisements all the time, but it’s okay if I were to come across a promotion that will be really useful to me. The useful promotion that made it onto my newsfeed is a result of some very good target marketing.

What many businesses don’t know is that IF they promote too much, people will engage less and less with them. Edgerank, an algorithm developed by Facebook years ago that determines what appears in the newsfeed will push these pages away from newsfeeds that are non-responsive – as it deems it irrelevant and does not add value to the reader.

Businesses CAN promote, however they should keep a good ration between content which engages and adds value for their fans, and business promotions.

2. Not using a Facebook third party app for Facebook Contest

The second mistake most businesses make on Facebook is launching a contest without a third party app. In the promotional guideline written by Facebook, it states that companies aren’t allowed to organize contest such as

• Like to win
• Comment to win
• Share to win

Companies who are interested to organize a Facebook contest are actually required to use a third party platform such as Binkd.

Many businesses don’t know that these rules apply to them, and many of them tend to think that organizing a “like to win” contest is acceptable after seeing one of their competitors doing it.

What they don’t know is these contests put their page at risk of getting removed by Facebook.

3. Automating by connecting Twitter account

Connecting your Twitter account to your Facebook page is one of the worst moves you can make.

That is because not only will you be over-posting, but most of your fans are not going to like it as your posts will lose its personal touch on both platforms.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly alright to automate your Facebook pages! And if you want to automate it, I recommend using platforms like PostRocket or Buffer.

These tools will actually post your content at optimal hours to maximize the most out of your Facebook marketing.

4. Buying Facebook likes

While the idea of getting 1000 fans of $5 on fiverr may seem like a good idea, it’s actually not. That is because those accounts are most probably fake accounts created using a bot that will only like your page and will not engage with you FOREVER.

I believe there will be more harm than good as it affects your Facebook Edgerank and you’ll find that you are more likely to own a page that is dead and invisible to your REAL fans.

Don’t believe the hype that social media is all about the numbers. That is definitely not what it was created for and I strongly believe that the founders of every social network are juggling hard between achieving greater numbers (a-la Facebook’s 1 Billion users) and  maintaining engagement/activity levels.

5. Posting without thinking

What can be worst than over-posting on Facebook? Posting without having second thoughts, without proper planning and treating your Facebook page with a lack of professionalism.

It’s unfortunate to say this but that is exactly what had happened to Amy’s Baking Company, a restaurant in Arizona.

Their restaurant sought help from Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares to help turn their restaurant around. In the episode, Gordon Ramsay decided to quit as both of the owners didn’t really want to change. One of the owners, Amy wouldn’t listen and actually blamed everybody else except her, even Mr Ramsay.

After the episode aired, many who watched it went onto social media, reddit and their Facebook page to share their thoughts. The owners got angry and viciously retaliated.

When done right, Facebook marketing can play a crucial part of any marketing campaign. It can be used to help grow your business, increase sales, grow customer loyalty and more.

Your turn

What other mistakes have you seen businesses make on their Facebook pages?

image credit: Fady Aziz

About Aaron Lee Wei-Ren