If you’re serious about growing your audience on Facebook, consider these costly mistakes entrepreneurs make and correct yourself if you’re making them now. No matter what you’re doing today, you can improve upon it and make it work for you so that you can grow your audience, increase your subscription rate and make more sales.

Sharing Irrelevant Content

When you decide to do live events, you need to ensure that your events, like anything you share, fits with your audience. If you share things that they don’t care about, you’ll change the relationship you have with your followers and possibly lose some. If your followers think you’re switching your business direction in a way that doesn’t interest them, you’ll be reminded how easy it is to unfollow or leave a group.

Too Many Hashtags

While hashtags are popular on Instagram and other networks, using too many is distracting and doesn’t help at all. In fact, there’s research saying you shouldn’t use them at all on Facebook. If you do use them, don’t use them in every single post, or just because you think you should. Use hashtags when they’re relevant to help your audience discover useful information. #mydogrigby isn’t going to get you extra viewers, but #facebooklive might.

Not Answering Questions Quickly

Eventually, someone is going to start asking questions or interacting with you. It’s imperative that you answer them and respond in a reasonable amount of time to build trust and make you seem more approachable. Plus, it helps establish you as the expert. If you’re not willing to interact and answer questions, Facebook Live may not be for you.

Not Responding to Criticism Correctly

As a public figure and business in the public eye, eventually, you’re going to have criticism. Build a bridge, and a troll will find it. Criticism is normal, and if you look at it right, it’s also an opportunity. Your audience is always watching to see how you handle things. If you can handle critique well, it’s just going to make your audience love you even more. Also, keep an eye out for recurring complaints. While some people just want to be trolls, others are genuinely trying to help you improve. Treat both the same – with respect.

Not Using Content Strategically

When you’re using Facebook for business every bit of content you put up for public consumption needs to have a reason for being. It needs to build your audience, attract new people, engage your members, get subscribers, make sales, or some other goal. If you share content without a reason, you’re probably wasting time (yours and your audience’s) and possibly sharing irrelivant content.

Forgetting Your Target Audience

As with all types of marketing, your audience is the first thing you need to consider anytime you do anything, including hosting a Facebook live event. Ask yourself, is this something your audience wants or needs? Will your audience get some benefit from watching this? Does this live stream provide value to your audience?

Being Offensive

Even if you have a sense of humor for off colored jokes or information, this is something you need to be very careful about when it comes to business. If you think for one moment something is possibly offensive, don’t do it. It only takes one mistake to ruin everything when it comes to offending people. Knowing your audience well can help prevent problems.

Not Developing a Facebook Strategy

If you’re doing Facebook Lives without a plan in place, you’re less likely to reach your goals. Live streaming should be part of your broader Facebook strategy, including your page and group posts, any advertising you’re doing, and cross-marketing on other channels. Make sure that each Facebook Live leads your audience one step closer to your brand and the action you want them to take.

Not Keeping Personal & Business Separate

In the past I’ve seen many entrepreneurs try to sell their products and services through their personal Facebook profile. For the love of waffles, don’t do that. Not only is it against Facebook’s Terms of Service, meaning they can and will shut your profile down if they find out, but it’s also miss out on the great tools a Page or Group provides. The more you can keep things separate the better it will be for your business.

Not Making a Good First Impression

Everything comes down to first impressions in life, from a Facebook post, to a Facebook live event, to all the content you choose to share. The tricky part is that individuals come into your Facebook from different entry points, so you never know what they see first. That’s why you have to ensure that every update you share is relevant and meant for your audience. If you’re doing a series, make sure you link back to the first and any others you reference.

Don’t worry if you’re making these mistakes now. The greatest thing about social media marketing and Facebook Live is that you can learn more and do better every time.

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This week I’m talking about a resource I am an affiliate for, which means I may be compensated if you purchase after clicking on the links here.

never share resources with you that I haven’t personally tried and loved, though.