Facebook Feeds on your Website: A Catch…
Many organizations add an automatic feed from their Facebook Page onto their websites. It’s a great way to re-use your Facebook Page posts and to have dynamic, changing content appear on your website.
However, there is a “catch” you should be aware of…
The Facebook “widget” that you add to your website to display your posts has one undesirable characteristic. As long as you have at least one post on your Facebook Page from the last 30 days, then your recent and past posts appear on your website as expected.
But, if you don’t have any posts on your Facebook Page from the last 30 days, then NO posts will be displayed on your website. Ouch!
Your website visitors will think that your website is broken when the feed appears as a big, empty box. But this is the way that Facebook programmed it to work. Facebook wants to encourage people to post useful information on a regular basis.
Of course, it is good practice to regularly post information about your business or industry on your Facebook Page. Some organizations post frequently, some infrequently — you need to determine what frequency works for your organization. If you are just starting with Facebook Page posts, then start with one post per week and once you are comfortable with this, then bump it up to two posts a week.
The bottom line is: Don’t abandon your Facebook Page, otherwise there won’t be fresh content for your Facebook visitors and as pointed out above, your website will also stop seeing any posts as well (leaving an embarrassingly empty space on your website).
If it helps, here is a post we wrote recently on the Emerge2 Blog which contains a number of ideas regarding what you might post on your organization’s Facebook Page: “You have a New Facebook Page: Now What?”
(This article was originally posted on the Emerge2 Blog.)
