Imagine this: you’ve set up your Facebook page; everybody in the salon is getting involved and doing a great job posting content, running competitions and growing your fan base. Then one Tuesday morning when you open the salon, you can’t log into your page. It’s gone. Forever. Facebook has deleted your page. You’re now back to scratch and the most worrying part is, you’re not even sure how to stop this from happening again.
Well for some salons this is not imagination but a reality. The question is though, how do you stop this from happening? By not breaching Facebook’s terms and conditions. Here’s three simple mistakes any salon could make. The good news is, they are very easy to avoid.
Have You the Wrong Type of Business Page?
Did you set up your page properly at the start? If you’re ‘friend requesting’ people for your business page then you haven’t. You’ve just set up an ordinary personal page with information on your salon and your logo. To Facebook, this is a MAJOR no-no. The reason being that you have access to information when you friend a client that a business page shouldn’t have.
However, all is not lost. Facebook has a tool that will help you swap your friends over to a business page. While you will lose some content at least you can be safe in the knowledge that your page won’t just disappear. Here’s more information from Facebook on converting your page over.
Competitions – Don’t End up Being the Loser!
Don’t: Let’s admit it. We’ve all been guilty of it. We post a photo of a product or something ‘salesy’ related to our business and in order to win something we ask: “Just like and share this photo to enter this great competition!”. What’s wrong with that? Firstly, it’s against Facebook’s terms and conditions and they deal with it in one way only – they remove your page, no exceptions. This means you’re back to square one. You can ask them to share the competition but you can’t ask them to share to enter plus announce the winner on Facebook.
Do: Bring them away from Facebook. If you have a website, put up a page with a competition on it and tell everybody on Facebook that there’s a great competition over on www.yoursalon.com. Alternatively run a competition within your salon and get people talking about it on Facebook: “If you’re in this week, ask Mary on reception about your chance to win a €50 voucher.”
Saying Too Much Too Often
If you’re posting offensive content on your page, Facebook has every right to delete your account. But of course, you’re not. That’d be a really bad idea considering your business thrives on building relationships with your clients. However, it’s not just offensive content what will get your page deleted. It’s saying too much of the wrong thing over and over. Not only will too much sales related content not engage people but it may actually annoy them. Telling your fans 10 times a day about the same treatments and specials is a dangerous game.
Clients who are annoyed by this will generally unlike your page. While that’s bad some will go a step further and actually ‘report’ your page. While it may seem a little drastic to do this, trust us, some people will make it their business to do so. If you get enough reports Facebook will investigate your page. A way around this is to simply balance your content e.g. for every sales type post you do, do 3 or 4 non sales type like the latest trend, a client that reviews your salon or something you came across online that’s really interesting. Even if lots of people report your page then it won’t matter because you haven’t violated their terms.
Connor Keppel is the Marketing Manager at Phorest. You can contact Connor on 0207 100 9290 (UK) or 01 8747800 (Irl) or by email: connor.keppel@phorest.com
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