I’m sure that many of you are aware that I am extremely interested in Social Media, even though I don’t blog about it that much.
If you haven’t heard of Facebook, I don’t even know what to say to you! Facebook has literally exploded onto the scene in recent years and changed the dynamic of the entire internet. We’ve all heard the stats…one in ten people on the planet is a member of Facebook etc.
I had a Skype chat with Ryan Critchett the other day and we talked about Social Media a great deal. We spoke about Facebook Pages in depth, and I was letting all my thoughts flow out, really questioning their effectiveness.
A friend of mine made a great point: “The only Facebook Pages that seem to make any money are the ones that claim to teach you how to monetize your own page [apart from the pages owned by long established companies and corporations]“.
So who else do Pages work for?
They seem to work well for a person who has a good following, such as well-known Internet Marketer Ed Dale, although I don’t know how much money he makes from it. They also work well for bloggers and other people with an online presence, but in more of a community way than a business way.
I’m talking about things from purely a business perspective, and before you all jump in and tell me how great Facebook is, find me one person who uses it to make a living, or even makes any money from it .
What is Facebook’s major disadvantage?
I’d say 99.9% of its users have NO business intentions. This is unlike Twitter and LinkedIN, who have a much higher percentage of users with a business intent. A year or two ago when lots of marketers jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, they had to find their buyers in a sea of people. I saw many marketers with high hopes for their Facebook page completely flop!
Yeah it’s hard work and can be a pain to get ranked in Google, but at least someone doing a Google search e.g. for “dog training tips” is already ACTIVELY looking for dog training tips, unlike on Facebook. It is a place to socialise and connect more than anything else. With regards to personal profiles, even if you find someone you want to connect with, many people now only accept friends and family.
Facebook Ads
What’s great about Facebook is their advertising campaigns can be ultra laser targeted to people. But just because you know the approximate demographic, is that enough? Has the advertising market on Facebook got saturated meaning higher Cost-Per-Clicks and people no longer pay attention to it? Unless you’ve got tens of thousands of dollars to throw at advertising each month like Frank Kern, I don’t think it’s a particularly effective method of generating new leads. Facebook Ads may seem like an easy option for small businesses, but I’m worried they might be throwing their money away.
Facebook Pages
Well established companies and corporations can use Facebook Pages to improve their branding, engage with customers and remain accountable for their actions. Personally I believe that a Facebook Page should be used as part of an online marketing toolkit. I don’t think that any business can or should rely on a Facebook page as their only stream of income; not only because it’s hard to make money from, but because it is reliant on a third party which could change their terms and conditions at any time, as I have seen in the past. Additionally, I feel that Facebook Pages can make some companies look bad. For example, if they don’t know what they are doing with it and only have a handful of likes, to me this doesn’t look give the company a good image if they want to look successful and popular.
The Takeaway
Local businesses and people unsure about how to use Facebook for marketing should do as much research as possible. Be weary of Social Media “Experts“. It may be worth spending money on a solid course, but check results that others have got first. I’m still a regular and active user of Facebook, but not for business. This post has been about Facebook’s effectiveness purely from a business perspective. I just think that people need to be careful before jumping on the bandwagon and investing a great deal of time, effort and money into a Facebook Page and Facebook Advertising that may not generate any income. A Facebook Page is a great way to increase engagement and community, but don’t expect to become a millionaire from it. In short, they seem much more effective for long established companies than for new, smaller business.
I’m not discounting Facebook as a marketing tool at all, but only a tiny amount of people seem to be making any real money from it. Make it one of the tools in the swiss army knife rather than the knife itself.
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Your turn: What are your views on Facebook Pages? Do you have one? Have you or anyone you know made any money from one?
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