Why Facebook Needs Lessons on Running a Facebook Business Page

In Blogging, Marketing, Michigan Creative by Melissa Meschke

Facebook is doing Facebook all wrong*.

Recently, I visited the company’s official Facebook page to report a problem with some recent posts on the business pages I run. I noticed that the posts were only reaching one or two people.

Naturally, I wanted to go to Facebook’s Facebook page and let them know but upon visiting, I immediately identified three main problems.

Problem #1: No Wall or Ability to Message

Facebook has disabled their wall so users do not have the ability to write on it. Users also do not have the option to message Facebook. So how exactly are users supposed to ask for help? Facebook should know that many Facebook users use the social network to contact businesses, ask questions, and submit requests.

I do understand that the reason they do that is most likely due to volume. At the time of this writing, their official page has over 105 million likes.

So I’m going to give them a mulligan on that one.

Problem #2: They Don’t Respond

So I understand the user load in regards of wall messages and inbox messages, but the number of comments is much less. Their most recent posts have between 1,000 and 12,000 comments. Some are (of course) useless comments, but mixed in are genuine concerns and complaints from users; things like posts not working, business pages not working, analytics not working, and so on.

Even with the lower number of true complaints or questions, Facebook chooses to absolutely never respond. I scrolled through many of their recent posts and did not see one response from Facebook. Instead, users reply to each other with useless information and spam.

Problem #3: They Don’t Post Consistently

Facebook posts barely once a month. Don’t you want to inform your users of the latest and greatest things your product can do? Facebook makes updates every single day–don’t you have things to talk about? What about when Facebook has issues–don’t you want to address them and/or let your users know when they are fixed?

By posting inconsistently, you are not building a relationship with your customers and not doing a very good job of keeping them informed either.

Problem #3 exemplifies why I think they should take care of Problem #2!

So what is my point? Don’t have a Facebook page if you aren’t going to run right. What good does it do if it doesn’t inform or help customers and presents an image of a company that doesn’t care about their customers?

*Of course recognize that this blog is probably a very large moot point because they won’t change and you could kill most of these points by saying ‘they simply wouldn’t have time to do any of this’. But I still wanted to share my points!

Until next time!

~Melissa

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