10 Facebook Mistakes to Avoid | Social Media & Branding Tips | Free Report

10 Facebook Mistakes
to Avoid | Social
Media & Branding
Tips | Free Report
w w w . s o u r a v g h o s h . c o m
Sourav Ghosh
If you are using Facebook to create meaningful connections,
build your brand, find your customers, share your unique
message to the world, or to do anything important, then you
should be very careful about some common Facebook
mistakes.

http://www.souravghosh.com/blog/avoid-facebook-mistakes/
1 10 Facebook Mistakes to Avoid | Social Media & Branding Tips | Free Report
1. Sending friend request to someone without a message.
Though Facebook says that it's for connecting with people you know, but it's also a great platform
to connecting with people you don't know, making new friends, finding like-minded people. But
there is a right way and a wrong way of connecting with strangers on Facebook.
What most people do is they just click the 'Add Friend' button. But just think about it when I (or
anyone rational) see 763 (or more) friend requests from unknown people, what do I do? I simply
ignore. I feel annoyed too. Because I might miss requests from someone I know in the crowd. Trust
me, I love connecting with people, making new friends. But I'd always prefer to accept friend
request from someone, who sends me a message along with friend request. Just a simple 'hi',
where did they found me, why'd they want to connect with me. That's it. And I personally follow
it every time too. Whenever I'm sending friend request to anyone (known or unknown), I'm always
sending a personal message with it. Why send a message to people who know me? Because they
might be getting hundreds of friend requests too, so without a message my request might get

unnoticed. If you want to get into more details on this point, read this Facebook note by my friend
Anirban Saha.
2. Not understanding the difference between Facebook profile and
Facebook page.
If your Facebook profile looks like this, then you are bound to fail on Facebook. Additionally you are
making a fun of yourself to your quality potential audiences.

Just remember this common sense advice: Facebook profile is to be used as a person, not as a
business/ idea/ community/ brand/ cat ... or anything else. Infact Facebook made it very clear in
its first page. When you visit www.facebook.com for the first time, what do you see?
You can sign up for a Facebook profile from this page. And if you want to create a Facebook
Page instead, you can click the 'Create a Page' link ( www.facebook.com/pages/create )

Simple! Isn't it? With many extra features like scheduling, analytic (page insight), competitors
monitoring Facebook page is the perfect solution for professional use. Whereas Facebook profile is
the best place to showcase who you are as a person and connecting with people through a
personal approach.

3. Posting irrelevant comments (Spam alert!).
Imagine someone is having a conversation with his friends at a coffee shop on "What do you do
when you feel lost and alone?". Would you suddenly interrupt into the conversation saying "Check
out this brand new cool stuff"? Wouldn't that be very unsocial behavior? Don't you think you might
be thrown out of the coffee shop for disturbing people?
Don't ever make the same mistake on Facebook. If more and more people start reporting your
comments as 'spam', you'll be banned from Facebook very soon. So what should you do? Simple.
Be social, join the conversation. I don't mind checking out stuffs from those who interact with me
on Facebook.

4. Sending promotional stuff without a personal message.
Some people remember their friends only when they need to promote something. So what they do
is start sending a messages (with a link in most cases ) to all their friends. Without any Social
Conversation. (Guilty! I admit I made this mistake once when I was trying to win a so-called
Facebook contest).

Even many lazy morons send the promotional message in a Facebook group message. Trust me not
only most people will never check out the stuff, moreover they'll be pissed off and start avoiding
you online ( Unfriend or Block may be). On the contrary, see the example below how my
friend Anshul requested me to take a look at his new blog post. This is what being Social means!

5. Boring timeline with repeated links.
Facebook, specially the personal profile is intended for sharing what is happening in your life and
initiating conversation. Why would people connect with you here if you keep posting links (even
same links) all the time?

Let me give you some tips. I've experimented with posting all types of updates on Facebook. What I
found is, most engaging to least engaging posts are as follows: Profile picture / Cover photo
update > Personal status update (best are those with a question) > Personal photos > Interesting
/ Inspiring photos > Videos > Links. This may vary slightly depending on your Facebook audience,
but one thing for sure is links are the least engaging content for your Facebook profile. Better you
can share your links on Facebook pages. There also you should remember to keep sharing other
valuable links for your audiences, not just you own links.
6. Hiding your name and face.
Gone are the days of Orkut, when you could have a profile with a name like "ROckinG CooL DuDe"
and a profile picture of anything else other than your own face. If you want to create a nice /
professional impression with your Facebook profile, make sure you give your complete original
name and your own photo as profile picture.

Additionally you should also choose your profile url / username carefully. Keep it as close as
possible with your name. For example my Facebook profile is www.facebook.com/souravghosh not
www.facebook.com/iamastupidgit Got it? If you are serious about creating your brand online, or
Social Media marketing, stop being scared about disclosing your identity. People always prefer to
connect with real people. I never ever accept friend request from someone without a proper name
and profile picture. And trust me, most Facebook power users does the same. Do you hesitate to
give your own photo because you think you are not that handsome or beautiful? First of all, there
isn't any beautify contest going on in Facebook, and look isn't the only factor to consider in life.
Moreover do you know that, what you believe becomes your own personal truth? So by believing
that you are not that handsome / beautiful, you are actually ugly-fying (just invented the word :p )
yourself. Start believing that you are handsome / beautiful being who you are, give your own
profile pic, see what happens. You are not taking me seriously na? See this: Profile picture of 2010
(left) and current profile picture. Dhinka chika! I told you :-)

7. Being online Secret Agent.
If you want to create your brand name (read 'identity' ) online, you need to be visible. You need to
be known to people. But most people prefer to remain invisible on Facebook. They just read other
people's posts, like occasionally. They avoid posting updates and commenting, i.e. engaging in
conversation. But that's the purpose of Social Media! Common reason behind this hesitation is '
I'm not that good in English'. Well I studied in Bengali medium most of my life. Always got around
50% marks in English. Review my writing with any English scholar, they'll give you hundreds of
mistakes. But that's why I started writing. I wanted to improve. And trust me, I learned more
English in last few years, writing Social Media updates, than I learned in my 20 years of
academics. Still learning. Post updates, comment from heart. If your English is too bad, let people
know that you are working on improving and ask for help. No need to be ashamed.
8. Posting sensitive information online.
Now don't get carried away while using Facebook. Don't post anything on Facebook that may land
you up in trouble, if it falls into wrong hands. Avoid posting too much personal or sensitive
information online.

You might want to check out this Creep Quiz to be sure that you are safe online. No need to panic.
Just use some common senses. Facebook even offers great flexibility in post privacy settings. You
can restrict some updates, photos to a particular group of friends.

9. Being a Tag maniac.
You want more people to read your post, right? But that doesn't mean that you will tag everyone in
your irrelevant updates! Trust me it's very very annoying.

If someone explicitly express their desire that they want to get tagged in your every single posts, go
ahead and tag those crazy fans of yours. But please don't tag others . Never tag someone in any
post, which is not relevant to that person. If you are posting a group photo, ofcourse you should
tag each person in it.

It's also very much okay to tag people in a post, who will be interested in the info and don't want to
miss it. Like this
10. Having a Dustbin Timeline.
Now if you have some tag maniac friends in your friend list, they'll be tagging you in every photos/
updates you can imagine. And the scary thing is probably they are appearing in your Timeline. So
just imagine, when someone is taking first look at your profile what will they find? Complete
dustbin. Where everyone has dumped whatever they wanted. Solution: Enable Tag Review from
the Facebook Settings.

When you enable 'Tag Review' random posts where you are tagged doesn't appear on your
timeline. You can see those posts by clicking 'Activity log' from your profile page
Click on 'Timeline Review'

Now you can 'add to timeline' or 'hide' posts you are tagged individually.

Can I Help You With Your Facebook Strategies?
Do you need any personalized help regarding your Facebook presence? You can check out the 5$
consultation services I offer on Fiverr : Facebook Profile & Facebook Page. Or the Coaching,
Consultation & Counselling page for all available options.
Disclaimer:
To make the points easy to understand I might have used your post as an example. Please understand
that my purpose is not to ridicule you in any way. If your post appeared here as mistakes, hope you'd
take it sportingly and correct it for your own benefit.
What do you think?
I'd love to know what do you think of this report. Could you identify any of your mistakes? Come on!
Don't be shy! I committed some of the mistakes too. But I corrected and improved. Do you disagree with
some of my points? Do you want to add a few more points? Please leave a comment at the link below.

10 Facebook Mistakes to Avoid | Social Media & Branding Tips | Free Report

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10 Facebook Mistakes to Avoid | Social Media & Branding Tips | Free Report