- Of all the members in my Five Minute Social Academy
the most frustrating piece of social media
has got to be the Facebook business page.
They can just be tough.
In this video, I'm gonna show you why,
Facebook business pages usually don't work
as well as how to potentially fix that.
And I'm also gonna show you an alternative strategy
for Facebook business pages
where you don't even post on them, all right?
Let's get into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter.
Yes, it rhymes with the boy wizard.
And in this video, I'm gonna talk about
why Facebook business pages usually don't work.
They are by far among all the people in my programs
the most frustrating parts of social media.
So why don't they work and how can we fix it?
I'm gonna break down the three main reasons
Facebook business pages usually don't work
as well as present an alternative strategy
where you could have a Facebook business page
but not even post on it, all right?
The first reason Facebook business pages usually don't work
is because it's the wrong audience.
And Facebook screws us up with this,
as soon as you put up a page they prompt you multiple times
sometimes in multiple places,
hey, invite your friends and family to like your page.
And what happens is you end up with a page
full of friends and family
who are not going to buy from you or hire you,
or they are not your ideal client
or maybe you're a local business
and they don't even live in the area that you live in.
All of the signals on the backend of the Facebook algorithm
are being determined by who is engaging with your content
and who's not.
So if you're a local business like I'm here in Seattle
and I've got all of these people engaging
that are my friends in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Well, then Facebook doesn't know what to do with it
they're like, wait, okay, so people in North Carolina
like this post a lot so let's make sure
to show it to more people in North Carolina
even though they can't come to my local business.
So how do we avoid that?
Well, first of all, ignore Facebook suggestion
that you invite friends and family,
invite your friends and family that are actual clients
or potential clients, but do not invite everybody
just to get that number up, okay?
'Cause all that number does is boost your ego
but then later on you're gonna have this page
with all these people that are not your ideal people.
You're better off having 50 people on a page
that are your perfect clients than you are having 500
that are just a bunch of friends and family
and people you came across in groups
that just agreed to like each other's pages
or different things like that.
The second reason Facebook business pages
usually don't work is because the reach is so low.
Now, back in the good old days
when Facebook business pages first came out
you could on a business page
and then do a lot of your followers would see your posts.
It was pretty cool that doesn't exist anymore.
So now, the average reach of a Facebook business page
in the last four year study I saw was 1%.
Now, there are a bunch of pages that are reaching nobody.
So maybe you got 10% reach on your Facebook business page.
So let's say you start up a page,
you work really hard to grow it to 500 people
and then you put something up
and 1% would be five people seen it,
or 10% would be the 50 people seeing it.
Is that even worth your time,
if only one to 10% of the audience sees your post?
And then it's gotta be really good to get them into engage.
So it's just tough because the organic or free reach
is not great on Facebook business pages.
So how do we overcome this?
Well first, make sure that,
the people you're inviting to like your page
are the people that do follow your page,
are your perfect people.
Then post the kind of content they want to engage with
and that they will engage with.
'Cause if you start going off in different directions
they won't engage and they'll stop seeing your posts.
And then of course the other workaround
is to boost your posts,
just to get them in front of more people.
If you've got the budget for that
and it makes sense for your business, okay?
Don't do what I call ego boosting, boosting
where you boost your posts, a bunch of people like it.
And then 72 hours later you're like,
wow, look at all these people like my post, I feel so good.
And then three days later they were like,
oh, but nobody bought anything, or nobody hired,
or nobody scheduled a discovery call or anything like that.
Now, at this point you might be wondering
is a Facebook business page even worth my time.
And it may not be, I'm gonna share the third reason
they usually don't work in a second.
And then I wanna share an alternative strategy
for how a lot of people I work with
are using their Facebook business pages
where they don't post at all, okay?
But right now the third reason
that Facebook business pages usually don't work for people
is because the content is awful.
And that's not an attack on anybody
it's just that as business owners
we generally are not a content marketers
or content strategists or content creators for that matter.
And sometimes we just wanna get our advertising message out
hey, we're having a sale, hey, I offer this,
you should hire me, you know,
and what people sign into Facebook for
they sign in to catch up with friends
and family and see updates from celebrities
or companies they like,
you know, or I should say companies they love.
For example, I love to see updates from Apple
'cause I'm an Apple fan boy,
but I don't need to see updates from my dry cleaner,
my auto-mechanic,
you know, my, I do not know a life coach,
you know, different things like that
when they're just blasting these different specials.
So it's often just the wrong content, so how do we fix that?
You have to put out content
that your audience actually wants to see
but not only see and engage with.
And sometimes that can be really time consuming
depending on your business.
So what comes down to this,
is a Facebook business page even worth your time?
Even if you only spend an hour a week
on a Facebook business page
but you got no business from it, would that be worth it?
Let's say you're spending four hours a month
coming up with posts on your business page
couple of people click like
nobody does anything beyond that.
If you spent that four hours, maybe talking to somebody
or being a guest on a podcast or messaging some people
or any number of things, cold calling
what else could you do with that four hours
that might actually bring you customers and clients?
Just something to think about
everybody's business is different.
And of course that sometimes leads to,
well, should I even have a page?
And yeah, I think for almost all businesses
you should have a page.
First of all, you may have seen this looking
for recommendations feature on Facebook.
If somebody wants to recommend you
it's much easier to recommend you if they can tag your page.
And when they tag your page
the person who they recommend the to can click on it
and go right to your page.
So that can actually be really helpful.
Plus people are searching more and more
on Facebook for businesses, especially local businesses.
Tom, who took my course and is now in my membership
he actually had a business page
and he optimized it the way we show you.
And he had one like on his business business page
and a woman called and she said,
hey, I need you to come out and do what you do.
And he said, oh great, where'd you hear about me?
And she said, oh, I found you on Facebook.
And he was like, what?
I only have one like on my page, so it can happen.
So what do you do with a Facebook business page
if you decide posting is not worth it?
Well, first of all, you want it to be optimized
so when people land there, you look like a great business.
Don't worry about the like number.
Yes, some people will look at a page
and go you've only got 24 likes, are you that popular?
I'll tell you what,
if you've got 50 reviews and recommendations,
that's way better than a bunch of fake likes
any day of the week.
So what I recommend,
if you decide posting is not worth your time
on your Facebook business page
just think of it as a landing page for your business
if somebody recommends you.
So make sure when they land there
they can see exactly what you do, why you're great,
you know, you have a beautiful updated cover photo
and profile picture,
and maybe you even pin a post at the top that says,
hey, welcome to our Facebook page
we don't post here regularly
because we haven't found that it's the best way
to serve our customers.
But if you'd like to see more about our business
scroll down the page and then you have like a few posts
that were recent that maybe,
tell them more about your product
or different things like that.
So it just becomes a place for people to go.
And again, 50 recommendations and reviews
is way more popular or effective than I would say 200
or maybe even 500 likes at that point.
Especially, with that thing where you go,
look, we're not posting here.
You know, you ever sort of put that asterisk there,
yeah, no, we only have 17 likes
because this is not worth our time.
It's just something to think about,
it's worked for a lot of people.
You don't even post
but you still have a Facebook business page
and it brings you business
because people find you on search
or they recommend you, all right?
If you are struggling with other social media problems
I do wanna offer you this
my social media quick fix guide,
some of the problems around engagement
or sales or reach on social media
and how to get started, fixing those for your business.
This is normally $19
but I've decided to offer it free for my YouTube community.
You can find the link on the screen here
or you can click the link in the description of this video.
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