5 Pitfalls to Avoid with Facebook

With 2.07 billion monthly active users, there’s no disputing that Facebook can have huge marketing potential for your law firm. However, as with any type of marketing, your efforts will only be effective if you follow best practices.

• Don’t publish only self-promotional content
  Promoting your own content is a great idea. Promoting ONLY your own content is not. The real value of social media is in the sharing of content and ideas, so make sure you’re sharing other content that your fans will be interested in. Not only will your fans find your page more interesting, but you’ll be establishing yourself as an industry authority.
• Don’t publish text-only posts
  Continuously posting only regular text updates will get boring fast, so mix it up. Post different types of content on your page – upload photos and videos, post links to interesting and valuable content, issue invitations to upcoming seminars.
• Don’t automate all of your activity
  Social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer can make implementing a social media marketing plan much easier. However, avoid publishing all of your content through these third-party apps.

Some studies suggest that posts that are automatically published via one of these tools appear less often in the News Feed. More importantly, you should be publishing timely content and responding individually to fans, something that’s difficult to do if you’re scheduling everything in advance using an automated tool.

• Don’t forget to include a strong call to action

One of the easiest ways to engage your fans is to ask them a question. In fact, studies show that when you post an update and ask a question at the end, people are almost 50% more likely to interact with your content.

Asking a question isn’t the only way to encourage interaction with your content. Ask your fans to caption a photo, fill in the blank, or “like” if they agree with you.

• Don’t obsess on THE number of fans

Watching the number of Likes on your page skyrocket is exciting, but it’s not the most important measure of your page’s success. Engagement is a much more significant metric.

Having more fans is useless if they never engage with your page. It’s much more valuable to have fewer fans that are regularly commenting, liking, and sharing your content. When those fans do engage with your content, their friends see your updates in their newsfeeds, so you have the potential to reach a wider audience.

With a small amount of effort, Facebook can be a powerful marketing tool. Have you increased your engagement with your customers and prospects on Facebook? What strategies worked best for you?

Rita Chaires
Director, Web and Online Marketing Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com