3 Ways You’re Doing Facebook All Wrong

Stop doing these three things to improve your return on engagement.

With every marketing guru adamant that a cleaning business must have a Facebook Page to facilitate growth, the internet is flooded with advice on what “to do” to get the most out of Facebook. But here are three things you want to avoid doing on Facebook if you want the best ROE (return on engagement) out of your social media strategy:

Post view and engagement statistics show that Facebook posts without hashtags perform more than 50% better than posts with hashtags. More than that, the more hashtags you add to a Facebook post, the less likely it is to be seen. Why? Facebook has never truly embraced the hashtag from Twitter, which it sees as competition.

If you are dedicated to the hashtag, focus your social media efforts on Twitter and Instagram – but only as long as your strategy is netting you followers that you are able to send to your website and convert into customers. Just because you like hashtags and Twitter doesn’t mean your target consumers do. Make sure you play their game in their playground to make the most of your social media strategy.

It’s tempting – oh, so tempting – to take the easy route when you’ve snagged a super cool video of your techs doing something cool like hallway swimming and upload it directly to Facebook. It’s quick; it’s simple.

But it doesn’t support your online presence. Remember, the core of your online existence is your website. Everything else you do online – on any social media platform, on review sites, with lead generators, with contests – must lead your prospects to your website (where presumably you have great sales conversion calls to action).

So when you post a video straight to Facebook, you lose the opportunity to drive traffic to your website or otherwise boost your SEO. Instead, take the extra time – literally minutes – to post that video to your company YouTube channel (which you’ve connected to your website); that way you can add a card to your video, program in some keywords and phrases, and make it searchable – independent of your share to Facebook, which is still an awesome idea!

Cleaning may be the only thing you think about and talk about during the business day, but it’s not likely to be the only interest in your life. The same applies to the community of followers and fans you’re trying to grow and cultivate through your social media channels. So make sure your posts appeal to all of the aspects of life of your most common target markets.

If you’re currently shooting in the dark with your topics or are posting exclusively on cleaning topics, consider this strategy: make a list of the 10 most common features of the majority of your current clients: have pets, have kids, military families, sports fans, stuff like that. Make that your 2-week rotational pattern for your daily posts. When followers see you connecting with something they care about, that’s when they Like, Comment, and Share posts, and that’s what you’re looking for in your ROE (return on engagement).

When you use the information at your fingertips to take stronger control of what you can do to create a fan following, you’ll see a higher ROE. And then you’ll be better able to connect your ROE and your ROI as the connections between community engagement and sales becomes clearer.