How to Be Annoying on Facebook: Business Edition

Your pal Debbie's Facebook page has more portraits of her Pomeranian than the Internet has of Kim Kardashian's derriere. And boy, is Debbie annoying. But the truth is, the Debbies of Facebook are not the only irritating ones. Brands can be pains too. If you engage in any of the following practices, your fans will leave your page, just as quickly as they'll de-friend that couple who posts as if every day is Valentine's Day. 1. Lazy ad targeting. I asked my friend Andy which brands irritate him most, and he said, "The one who keeps trying to tell me I can call Tanzania, Djibouti, or some other place where I don't know people for 2.1 cents a minute." Facebook allows you to dig really deep when you create ads. If you want to target men in their fifties who are Twins fans and live in Blaine, you can do exactly that by using Facebook's ad manager. If you don't target your ad, you'll annoy everyone who is not a middle-aged Twins fan in Blaine. Plus, you're wasting your money if you don't put time and effort into aiming your ad at the right audience. If you're in injection molding, you will not make a single dime off an ad that reaches people in the fashion industry. Find your audience and make sure they're the only ones who see your stuff. 2. Constantly selling. If every one of your posts is prompting people to buy something, your audience will tune you out. It's ok to post when you have a sale, a new product or a great deal to offer, but those posts should be occasional posts mixed in with posts that offer valuable information to your fans. 3. Being boring. I've seen Facebook pages that are long streams of dry articles, interrupted with the odd grin-and-grip photo. Snore. Even if what you do too dull for Hollywood, you can still jazz up your page with cool images, quotes, and even memes. Need some inspiration? Read this. 4. Overdoing it with photos. Fashion photographers take hundreds of photos during a single shoot. How many of those photos make it into a Vogue spread? Five, at the most. Why? Because those five photos are very best ones from that shoot. Plus, just imagine what Vogue would look like if every image from the shoot were in there. It would be too heavy to lift off of the rack at the grocery store! It's the same with Facebook. If you host an event, and upload every single photo you took at that event, those images will take forever to load. Additionally, people will lose interest very quickly. Pick your best photos -- five at most! -- and use only those. 5. Using Facebook for press releases. I think by now brands have learned that using Facebook to blast out press releases is the wrong way to use social media, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were still people out there doing that. Go ahead and make announcements when you have news, but make sure your status updates don't sound like (or link to) your press releases. The key to success on Facebook is to have a real person update the account; let that person's voice be heard. One of the biggest criticisms of Facebook, and social media in general, is that it fosters narcissism. Personally, I would argue that all it does is give an outlet to existing narcissism. However, it's important remember, whether you're posting as your brand or as Debbie, that what you post needs to be interesting to other people, not just you. Think first about what you audience wants to see, then choose what to post. Your page will see improvement.