Does your company have a Facebook page? With almost 80 percent of online Americans actively browsing the platform, it would be almost irresponsible not to. But as many a business owner, especially small and medium businesses, have found, social media management can quickly start to feel like a chore.
The easy solution here, if you have the staff, is to assign someone else to do it. Or even several someones. You’ve taken the time to identify your audience, you engage regularly, you’ve had a couple successful ads and maybe you’ve even set up a chatbot. Handing the reigns to someone else should be easy. Keyword: “should.”
Common Social Media Management Problems On Facebook
Even on a good day, social media management is full of pitfalls that your page admin will have to skillfully navigate in order to avoid attracting attention – or, god forbid, going viral – for the wrong thing. The undefined “they” might say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but a quick Google search turns up plenty of stories that would make even the strongest PR expert’s stomach turn.
So, without further ado, here are three of the most common problems your social media management team will face and how to handle them.
1. Your Facebook Ad Account Is Blocked
Your advertising account has been flagged because of unusual activity. For security reasons, any ads you are running will be paused until you can confirm your account information by contacting Facebook.
This is one of the most frustrating messages a page admin can run into when they log into your business account. Chances are you haven’t done anything wrong – but you still have to deal with the Sisyphean feat that is Facebook’s highly automated, and often robotic-feeling, customer service.
A suspension is especially bad news for social media management because all of the following that immediately occur:
- All active ads are paused
- You don’t have access to your reporting panel
- You are unable to add a new payment method or place new ads
It doesn’t matter how big your advertising budget is, once Facebook has suspended your ad account there’s not much you can do that doesn’t involve a lot of waiting. However, there are a few things you can do to get the process started:
- Connect another profile. If you really need your ad account up and running quickly, you can try using another profile connected to the page with a different payment method. You won’t be able to resume the paused ads, but you can create new ones. A word of caution however – this may flag additional suspicious activity on your account.
- Appeal, but only once. Resending the appeal form over and over just moves it to the bottom of the queue. So send it once, and then be patient.
- Comment on the official page. As page admins, we know that the fastest way to get the attention of a brand – however big – is to comment publicly on their page. Visit Facebook Business and leave a polite, but firm, complaint on one of their posts.
The best way to deal with Facebook customer service is to avoid needing them in the first place. So make sure you read their advertising do’s and don’ts before launching anything.
2. Your Organic Reach Declines
A big part of social media management is keeping an eye on who keeps their eye on you. Facebook is known for rolling out different features and tweaking their algorithms constantly, so you might notice your organic reach rises and falls depending on what kind of content is being prioritized in users’ news feeds.
Recommended for You
One particularly drastic change in 2016 meant that pages with more than half a million likes were seeing organic reach as low as two percent. This drop hit social media management teams hard – especially those who didn’t have big advertising budgets to begin with. Some of the challenges that come with these drops include:
- Fewer interactions. It can be tough coming up with new ideas for your Facebook page when you’re not getting a response to any of them. Fewer interactions also means your page loses algorithmic relevance and will be shown to fewer of your fans.
- Fewer new fans. Facebook’s algorithm is set up to show posts your followers have liked to their friends. If they stop liking your page’s posts, their friends will stop seeing them too.
- Lower web traffic. If you’re posting website links to your Facebook page in the hopes of driving traffic to it, a dip in organic reach will hit you hard. This is especially true for businesses with web stores; lower traffic equals fewer sales.
So how can you bounce back from this dip? Sometimes the best defense is a good offense:
- Ask fans to change their settings. By asking fans to make a simple adjustment and tick “see first,” your posts will be prioritized in their feeds and boost the likelihood of user interaction. Remember that just because your fans aren’t liking your page doesn’t mean they dislike it. They may just not be seeing your content.
- Post less. It might seem counterintuitive, but less is more when it comes to increasing your organic reach. Remember that spamming your fans with too many posts may cause them to snooze (a 30-day break, essentially) your page or unfollow it entirely. Focus on quality over quantity instead.
- Make a video. Research says that 92 percent of mobile video viewers share content with others. On top of that, that native Facebook videos see a 186 percent higher engagement rate and are shared 1,000 percent (yes, one thousand) more than videos linked from other hosting sites.
Want more ideas for boosting engagement? Check out these episodes of Three Girls’ CEO Erika Taylor Montgomery’s micro-podcast, Two Minute Marketing Tips, available on iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud.
3. You’re Getting Negative Reviews On Your Page
Especially for Facebook pages that focus on a business to consumer (B2C) relationship, a big part of social media management is going to be handling customer reviews – good and bad. Eighty-eight percent of online shoppers will read a review before making a purchase decision, and 62 percent will check a brand’s Facebook page prior to clicking the “buy” button.
For this to work in your favor, you need to have the reviews feature enabled on your page. Unfortunately, negative reviews are inevitable and can be caused by these (among others) incidents:
- A bad customer service experience
- A faulty or damaged product
- A PR scandal and user revolt
- Spam from a troll or competitor
If you have a high volume of reviews, and most of them are positive, then the occasional negative review won’t affect your “x out of 5 stars” rating. On the other hand, if your negatives begin to outweigh your positives then you definitely have a problem. Make sure your social media management team knows how to handle it.
- Answer politely. A negative review can be frustrating, especially if you feel that it was undeserved. However, you must always answer politely and respectfully to avoid making the problem worse.
- Report unfair reviews. Facebook doesn’t allow page admins to delete reviews (understandably), but it does have a report feature for those that are obviously spam. To report a review that doesn’t comply with Facebook’s community standards, click on the menu arrow in the top right corner of the review and follow the steps.
- Think about what you did. If you are receiving an overwhelming amount of bad reviews due to a PR flub, then it may be time to consider a public apology and plan to make amends.
- Encourage good reviews. Ask your happy clients to leave reviews and ratings on your Facebook page. You can encourage these by adding a link to your review page in an e-mail to your customer database, or simply make a post on your page asking loyal fans to oblige.
- Disable your reviews. An excess of untruthful or spammy reviews can damage your business in the long term, so if you have exhausted all other possibilities your social media management team may want to consider disabling ratings and reviews entirely. Be aware, however, that this may just drive the problem elsewhere.
Divvy Up Your Social Media Management Team
If you’re a big enough company that you’ll be bringing on interns during the year, or if you simply want certain people to be limited in the tools and actions they have access to, you can dole out specific rolls to your social media management team. Here’s a breakdown of the six different rolls on a Facebook page from Constant Contact.
- Admin – This is the highest level of access on a Facebook page. Admins can assign roles and change others’ roles. They can also post on the page, respond to messages, create Facebook ads, and view analytics for the page. You want to limit this level of access to the least number of people possible.
- Editor – An editor has all of the rights of an admin except for adding and assigning page roles. They can post to the page, respond to messages, create ads, and view Facebook Insights.
- Moderator – Page moderators have less access than admins and editors. They can’t post content to the page, but they can respond to comments posted on the page by your fans. They can also send messages, create ads, and see Facebook Insights.
- Advertiser – Users in the advertiser role are limited to only creating Facebook or Instagram ads for the page, viewing Facebook Insights and the page quality tab, and seeing who published as the page.
- Analyst – This role has the least access of all the options. An analyst is restricted to viewing Facebook Insights, the page quality tab, and seeing who published as the page only. They cannot create ads or post as the page.
- Jobs Manager – If you have a specific employee who manages hiring and other HR-related responsibilities, you would likely want to assign them as a jobs manager. This role has the same access as an advertiser, plus the ability to publish and manage jobs.