Facebook remains as the most popular social media platform in the world, with 79% of American adults using Facebook in comparison to the likes of Twitter and Instagram. This makes it the top choice when it comes to digital marketing.
With so many users, you can’t avoid fake accounts, programmed bots, and spammers. There are approximately 207 million duplicate accounts and 60 million fake Facebook accounts to date.
If Facebook mistakes you as one of those fake accounts or spammers, you might end up in Facebook jail. You won’t be able to market your brand and the penalties could drag your business down beyond recovery.
But what is Facebook jail and how can you avoid getting stuck in it?
Facebook jail is a term that means suspension. It’s when Facebook mistakes you as a bot or spammer and blocks you from posting on groups. This jail period can last from a few hours to a whole month.
This jail can kill your online business in an instant. People will assume your business is a scam and all the trust you’ve built with your audience will dissolve. You won’t be able to market your business either, which means you’ll lose out on valuable consumers with each passing hour.
If Facebook flags your account even further, you won’t be able to log in for a while. The worst thing that could happen is Facebook deleting your account. You’ll lose everything you’ve worked for and invested in.
Sometimes, businesses get locked up in this jail without realizing why. To help you avoid getting flagged and stuck in Facebook jail, take a moment to consider the following tips:
Facebook got a lot stricter with how people make accounts. You can no longer make duplicate accounts or fake accounts because Facebook now requires mobile number verification. Your business will get suspended if too much time passes without verifying your account.
This means you can’t make duplicate accounts using the same number. If you make dummy accounts to reach a wider audience, Facebook will shut them down.
Your first step is to stick with one account and one mobile number. Make sure to verify your number when filling up your business bio. This is a quick step that many businesses fail to follow up on.
Posting the same marketing ad on 500 different Facebook groups each day is a recipe for disaster. The social media platform will flag you as spam and you’ll get suspended. Sure, you want to reach as many people as possible, but you must limit how many groups you post to.
The ideal range is between 1 and 50 Facebook groups per day. This will be enough to let you market your business to appropriate groups while avoiding Facebook’s scrutiny. It’s the upper limit of what a real human being can do.
Posting to more than 50 groups is impossible, even for a person with fast internet. If your business achieves this, it means you’re either using auto-post software or hire dozens of people to post on groups for you.
Facebook frowns down on both approaches. By limiting yourself to posting to less than 50 groups lets Facebook know you’re taking time to make each post meaningful instead of spamming the same thing repeatedly.
Speaking of posting the same thing over and over, you should avoid doing that if you want to stay out of Facebook jail. The problem is, original content is seeing a decline in Facebook. People post a third less original content than ever before.
What does this mean?
It shows that people are less engaged on a personal level with the platform. People share what their friends share. These could be things like videos or Instagram photos linked to Facebook.
This means you need to post original content, but it has to be something that people want to share. Avoid posting the same poster because it gets in people’s way and soon enough it won’t generate interest or engagement.
Facebook has a higher focus now on videos and a lot of people watch videos even when muted. You can start posting original videos to garner engagement from your audience.
Original content also means regulating what kind of content you post. If ten successive Facebook posts are all links, then Facebook might consider it as spam.
To avoid getting sent to Facebook jail, change the game up every now and then. If you’ve noticed your posts are looking too similar, post something different next.
If your past five posts were all marketing posters, change it up by posting a video or a poll to encourage engagement. Don’t forget to use YouTube videos. It’s one of the best digital marketing platforms available.
Posting too many links to your business site is one of the worst offenders. Not only will you stay in Facebook jail, but Google will penalize you too. You’ll rank lower instead of higher.
At the beginning of each week, you can lay out a plan for your social media marketing. Schedule when you’ll focus on creating content, when you’ll post, and when you’ll engage the audience. This keeps it organized but not too automated.
Facebook and Google both identify random, unorganized links as potential spams. You can avoid this detection by posting unique website links. Services like Rebrandly allow you to include a keyword in a short, custom link.
You can also use services like Bitly, which don’t give you a custom link but still shorten the URL for you. This makes it easier to post links to platforms like Facebook or Instagram. It also means you’re not spamming the same URL.
Unique links will do more than keep you away from Facebook jail. It’ll also help build trust between you and your Facebook audience. People are more likely to trust a short, custom link than a long one with a series of random characters.
One of the first things you should learn about advertising on Facebook is that you can’t spam content. Even if you have original content, you shouldn’t share the same post repeatedly on your page or in different Facebook groups.
If for example, you want to share a marketing video you’ve had on your page for a month, it is a good idea to edit the post first. Add a new caption or edit the video to add a few seconds of new content to it. Altering the hashtags can do a lot of good too.
Businesses that don’t edit their marketing posts get flagged as spammers. Do it too often and you’ll get suspended in Facebook jail for a few hours. Continue to do it and Facebook will shut you down.
You can prevent this by taking a few seconds to edit your captions. It’s that simple, yet so many businesses fail to do this. Instead, they rely on auto-posting software that spams content on Facebook, requiring little to no human input.
This doesn’t mean using these programs is wrong. The bad thing is relying on them too much and not planning ahead. A lot of people see their Facebook marketing campaigns fail because of reasons like:
If you can keep your head above these common mistakes, you’ll be on the right track. Even then, you still need to be careful when using auto-posting programs. The main cause of getting sent to Facebook jail is the frequency of marketing posts.
Many programs will post on different Facebook groups for you, eliminating the manual effort. The problem is that they’ll post the same ad or video to dozens of groups in less than a few seconds or minutes. That’s too frequent and it alerts Facebook that you’re spamming.
You can adjust the timing of these programs to make it appear more natural. Instead of scheduling posts to go up every thirty seconds, adjust it to a minute and thirty seconds.
Yes, your business should reach out to thousands of people, but you do want to make it a little more personal. Let people follow your account but don’t add random folk to your groups. Only add people you’ll interact with on a regular basis.
By adding people your business engages with, you can avoid looking like a spam-bot. This means keeping the Follow button available but only adding specific people or companies as Facebook friends and group members.
You should also avoid adding people you don’t know, don’t add people to Groups without their consent, and don’t get crazy tagging people. Don’t tag people in images they aren’t in because that’s a quick route to Facebook jail.
Keeping it personal also means taking some time out of your day to engage the audience. This could involve the following:
It’s best to dedicate a few hours of a day or two to do all of these things. This ensures you don’t get distracted when creating or posting content.
Facebook Groups is growing as a community and Facebook continues to add new features to it. There are groups where you can post about buying and selling, discussing topics with like-minded people, and for people of a specific place.
It’s grown to a point where people compare it to Craigslist. This means there are thousands of avenues for your business to cater to. Don’t put yourself in a box, trying to force your business to one or two specific groups.
If a particular group keeps rejecting your posts or deletes it moments after you’ve posted, don’t try to post it again. If they don’t approve your posts, move on to the next group. Otherwise, the administrators will get frustrated and eventually ban you from posting.
Some moderators are more lenient than others. They might give you a fair warning, but others could ban you out after one offense. Make it a point to read their rules and regulations before joining the group.
This might sound a little shocking, but many businesses fail to fill up their bio. It’s a small portion of Facebook that people ignore but you shouldn’t brush it off. Many people will turn to your bio to know your location and other means to contact you.
It should be a priority to fill in the needed information the moment you make your business account on Facebook. Filling this in, along with a verified mobile number, also lets Facebook and the audience know you’re not an automated spam-bot.
This can sound quite basic, but a lot of people get confused between their personal account and a Facebook Page. The former is for your personal use and the latter is for business use. Never interchange them.
This means you shouldn’t sign up for a personal Facebook account and use your business name for the account. If you do so and join Groups and discussions, the site will notice this and send you to Facebook jail.
Facebook Pages exists for business use. Pages can’t join Groups, so you might think there’s a little bit of a conundrum there. The technique is to modify your personal account too so that people see you’re associated with the Page you made.
Using Facebook as a digital marketing platform is a no-brainer. Over 2 billion people use Facebook nowadays and it’s smart to target that crowd. The issue is that many businesses fail to be careful and end up in Facebook jail.
We can help you avoid landing in Facebook jail and more. We can help you master social media marketing. We can build your links to rise up in Google rankings.
Still not sure if you’re doing it right? Contact us and we can review your digital marketing strategies. From there we can give you tips to build more traffic and generate higher profits.
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