Facebook Marketing Mistakes: What to Avoid and Why

Are you struggling to make Facebook marketing work for your business?

Many marketers don’t know how to connect with their audience on Facebook in a meaningful way for their business.

To learn how to get Facebook marketing right, I interview Brian Carter for our new Social Media Marketing podcast.

More About This New Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a brand-new show from Social Media Examiner.

It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Brian Carter, author of The Like Economy and LinkedIn for Business.

Brian shares insights into the common struggles and misconceptions marketers have with Facebook marketing today.

You’ll learn what to focus your efforts on and a few simple tactics that work.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Zune, Stitcher or Blackberry.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

Facebook Marketing for Business

The misconceptions marketers have about Facebook.

Brian explains why constant promotion is boring and what marketers should do instead. He describes how marketers should be using Facebook, and if you are not already on Facebook how to check it out and interact.

You’ll learn why it’s all about selling the dream and bridging the gap. One thing to do is to have a vision of the life that your customer is trying to live and portray that through photos and maybe even videos.

Brian shares some examples of businesses doing this well.  One of these businesses creates their own someecards. Discover how you can test this kind of tactic in your Facebook marketing.

Someecards is a popular, funny, online card site where you can create cool stuff with your own message attached.

Listen to the show to find out how you can create cool stuff to get people to start sharing more of your content.

The biggest mistakes marketers repeatedly make on Facebook.

Brian describes the 5 things you need to do to sell on Facebook as shown on his Facebook Diagram below and outlines the mistakes marketers make at each one of these steps.

Once you have your fans and you have reached them, you still need to persuade them.

Brian Carter's Facebook Diagram

Listen to the show to find out how to make Facebook marketing work for your business.

The Facebook metrics you need to pay attention to and why

Consider the possibility that your business might be having trouble because people may not be aware of you or they’re not engaging. You might not be showing up in their news feed or maybe you’re showing but they’re not buying for some reason.

Look at the metrics to figure out which part you’re having trouble with.

You’ll learn how to balance the number of fans on your Facebook page with the effective reach of your Facebook marketing and what Brian considers “trash-can metrics.”

Listen to the show to learn how to determine the metrics that matter most to your business.

How B2B businesses can approach Facebook marketing

Brian discusses the different options to target B2B customers on Facebook and feed people into your sales funnel.

When it comes to ads, you need to have passionate fans. Your fans have to be passionate, affordable and they need to be buyers.  Discover how to get to know your customers in Facebook terms. Ask “What other things do your customers like?”

There are a couple of tools for finding out your fans’ likes: Optim.al and Infinigraph.

Listen to the show to find out more about qualifying your audience on Facebook.

Brian shares his best Facebook marketing tip: Share a photo and give a call to action such as “Click Like if…”

To find out more about Facebook, check out our first podcast episode with Mari Smith, who shares insights on Facebook mobile.

Survival Tip: Use Images on Facebook

Recently Mari Smith and I experimented with this and it really does work. If you want to get maximum exposure for what you share on Facebook, use images to dominate Facebook news feeds. Images grab attention.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

Social Media Examiner posts updates of articles with a screenshot of the article.

Shout Out

We have an all-new event coming soon that Social Media Examiner has been putting on for the third year now, Facebook Success Summit. It’s the web’s largest online Facebook marketing conference.

Watch the video below to find out how we use Facebook for Social Media Examiner and what we’ve learned. You’ll also hear more about how you can learn successful Facebook marketing strategies and tactics.

Check out Facebook Success Summit 2012—tickets are currently on sale for 50% off for just a little while longer.

Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:

• Connect with Brian Carter on his website, Facebook and Twitter.
• Check out Brian’s books The Like Economy and LinkedIn for Business.
• Study Brian’s Facebook Diagram to check for Facebook marketing mistakes.
• Try Someecards and Meme Generator to create images to share on Facebook.
• Check out Optim.al and Infinigraph for useful Facebook insights.

If you enjoyed this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast, please head over to iTunes, leave a rating, write a review and subscribe.

• Click here to subscribe via iTunes.
• Click here to subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed).
• You can also subscribe via Zune, Stitcher and Blackberry.

What do you think?

What are your thoughts on the mistakes that marketers are making on Facebook? Please leave your comments below.