If you’re a busy business owner, you undoubtedly would like to get more out of Facebook. That “fun” social marketing stuff still takes a lot of work! If you’ve ever contemplated shortcuts for publishing content, this post is for you. If you’re already creating content for your business, blog posts are a great type of content you’ll want to carry over to your Facebook page. There are time-saving tricks for content, but some Facebook shortcuts will quickly have your fans unliking your page faster than a speeding bullet.
One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners making is trying to cut corners on Facebook by using third-party apps to auto-share their blogs to their pages. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of your online tasks magically took care of themselves with one touch of a button? While that certainly sounds like a great notion, trust me – these apps do more harm than good. You don’t want an auto-posting Facebook blog button or anything of the sort. And I’ll tell you why.
Auto-posting ticks people off
Most users can recognise an automatic post from a mile away, which makes that blog post you worked so hard on look sloppy and wasteful. Why would anyone want to talk to a machine on a platform built on social interaction? One of the core ideas of social media is the notion that individuals are able to openly converse and interact with brands. Every single status update you post to your Facebook business page should be considered a conversation spark — something that will get your fans talking. If you use a third party app to push your updates to Facebook, when your fans start talking about the blog post no one will be watching your page to answer them. Using an app to update your Facebook status tells your fans and customers that you’re not invested enough in talking to them to share that blog post update personally – an offense many social media users might just crucify a business over.
Auto-posting looks sloppy, not streamlined
With few exceptions, using an app to automatically push content to Facebook from your blog or from Twitter looks sloppy. Text can formatting, images might not appear, or links break. If you’re not posting those updates directly to your page, you have no way of knowing how they’ve come through until long after your customers have already experienced them.
The ultimate eyesore, in my opinion, is the branded stamp. This scarlet letter broadcasts to your Facebook fans the exact name of the application you used to submit the post. HootSuite, Twitter, and Buffer are common culprits of pushing posts to Facebook. While these platforms offer great services like scheduling posts, their ugly branded labels shouldn’t have a place on your Facebook business Page.
Show customers your content is worth it
So how can you efficiently get all your content on Facebook? Apps that automatically push content to Facebook really only save two minutes of your time, and they have great potential to do more harm than good. Show your fans that you care about the message by taking the extra moment to manually post and configure the link.
The Exception: If you’re really hard pressed for time, there are white label applications that, for a fee, will allow you to customise the branded stamp. That means rather than showing the name of the app in the corner, it would show your business name. If you really must go the route of automatically posting blogs to Facebook, I’d highly recommend checking out customisable options like Post Planner.
Posting recklessly on your Facebook wall can be worse than not posting anything at all. Take the time to post those blog updates to your Facebook business page by hand and you’ll have the added perk of being able to format the links, add additional keywords, larger images, and other tailored content that might not pull through with an app. Your customers will thank you for it, and you might actually do what Facebook business pages are intended for – building new connections!Finding the right rhythm for your Facebook business page takes patience and practice. What are the best tips you have found for posting your blog updates on Facebook? Share your comments below!