Why Facebook Tricks are Bad for Your Business

Facebook tricks are bad

People like tricks, it makes them feel like they are bypassing the rules and benefiting where they really shouldn’t, so I named it as such.

One of the most popular posts on our site is Facebook Hack- My Trick for Facebook Likes, but it isn’t really a trick.

It’s more of an idea of how to find Facebook page owners on Facebook and leverage them to get more followers for your own Facebook page.

But tricks don’t work, no matter how popular they seem. Let’s take a look at some of the recent Facebook ‘tricks’ people have been using:

  • Putting links in comments to avoid link penalties*
  • Removing link preview to avoid link penalties*
  • Posting multiple photos at once
  • Using more text only updates
  • Use photos to get more engagement
  • Tag people to get them interested
  • Friend people and then ask them to like a page
  • Posting spam on other business page timelines

In a world that has over a billion Facebook users, it seems like every business has a Facebook page and everyone wants more followers, reach, engagement, traffic, etc. But using tricks and hacks to get followers isn’t effective– why? Because Facebook is always evolving.

Why Facebook Tricks Don’t Work

1- Facebook’s algorithm is always changing– In the past few weeks they’ve made several changes to the newsfeed. Link embeds are given more weight, text only updates are given less, pictures are supposedly given more reach, etc. It’s difficult enough to stay on top of multiple social media profiles without chasing the latest update.

2- Changes are rolled out intermittently around the world, over months of time, it’s difficult to know when some of the changes take place.

3- Blogs that share these tactics do not update them when they’ve changed, meaning you could be reading old tricks that no longer work. If there is no date on the blog post, how will you know if the trick is current?

4- Companies are not aware of these changes until long after they happen, and then they start using them either after they ‘work’ or they continue using them after they stopped working, causing more harm than good.

5- Gaming the system is not as effective as learning how to do it the right way– Once you’ve learned how to use Facebook, the latest change isn’t going to kill your results, that’s worth doing more than using a quick trick. If these tricks don’t work, and it isn’t worth the time to track them down and use them, what does work?

Here’s What Does Work on Facebook

Strategy– Every impression you get on Facebook needs to work in your favor. The only way to make sure that happens is to have a strategy for your posting. Start by identifying your goal for being present on Facebook, then write in tabs, updates, and promotions you can include to achieve results. Look for a future post on a Facebook strategy example I would recommend.

Consistency– Post content regularly. Test to see how many updates a day works best for your customers and statistics by regularly checking your Insights. By being consistent with posting you can test better, try new update formats, and gain more reach by simply updating often. Additionally if you agree with the 80/20 rule for quality/promotion the more you update, the more often you can promote your products and services.

Patience– Results don’t happen overnight. In most cases it takes 3 months or more to see results and a return on investment. There are some factors you can see immediately that show things are improving- read that blog post here.

Personality– Outside of scheduled updates that closely fit your strategy, there needs to be room to improvise. Whoever is managing your business pages should have the freedom to add personality to comments, updates, interactions on other business pages and in private messaging. People want to talk to people, not so much with a faceless business.

The Reality of Social Media

There are no shortcuts that will make it easy to get results from social media. But you can get results if you take your time, put in the work and plan your strategy.

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