11–20 of 115 posts
Facebook is not a one stop marketing shop. It won't light a fire under a business unless a) that business is worthy of the fire b) that marketer is very proficient.
It sounds like neither a nor b were satisfied in this case.
Were the owner to spend more time educating his or herself on social marketing, I feel they would have received better results.
This is where he went wrong; signing up to Facebook because a book said a business needs a Facebook page to be successful online is the wrong approach. If you can't explain why you're making a Facebook page it probably isn't going to work, even if you have no knowledge of Facebook as a platform you should still have knowledge of human behaviour.
We're not a traditional business (we're an internet forum) and we have close to 100,000 likes at the moment, the value of having likes is seriously overstated, we get maybe ~300 click through's when we post an article and engagement is dropping more and more, in fact the same can be said of Twitter, we have ~6000 followers and get similar click through rates when we post something. They're not bad to have (Facebook page, Twitter account) but they aren't worth the time investment in most cases.
It seems now that liking a page on Facebook or following a twitter account are hollow gestures that don't really carry any weight in the future.
The pain is in first attracting the right people to click your advert. Then you need to get them to buy something. With such low conversion rates, the cost per click is too high for many to justify.
All of the responses to these articles are usually "they're doing it wrong," which is more of an indictment of facebook than the multiple users who try out advertising and see no positive results at all.
I can certainly understand the author's frustration with Facebook advertising, and for what he's selling, it does make more sense to use Google than Facebook or Twitter. I don't think that's an indictment of the site, though. Facebook and Twitter are mediums for sharing and discussion. Traditional commerce feels a bit off, at best. If you want to use them to promote a business, you have to be participating in them on…
In the real world, there's a difference between promotion and advertising. You promote first and advertise once people know who you are. Then you run well-targetted advertisements aimed at the audience you want to reach. It's easy to forget that on the internet.
Often times people omit the low-cost promotional tools and run straight to the advertising. That's a big mistake in most cases.
I say:
1) Set up a Facebook page for your business 2) Learn to blog 3) When you are ready to try an ad campaign put a lot of legwork into it. Also look into site-specific advertisements for sites in related territory, etc.
Advertising is hard to get right. It always is. I would agree it's not an indictment against Facebook. It is an indictment of the hype of internet advertising though.
People are getting bad ROI with Facebook because, they are comparing it to the ROI to the ads on Google. Ads on Google tend to have much higher ROI because they usually represent users already in need of your category of product. This is like people handing you shopping brochures when you go to a mall. You are clearly out to shop and hence the ROI on brochures will be higher.
Whoa, what? Advertisers can see my Facebook profile if I click their link? Talk about oversharing...
> everything I read about maximising your web presence and impact told me that SMEs must integrate and embrace social media, especially Facebook This is where he went wrong; signing up to Facebook because a book said a business needs a Facebook page to be successful online is the wrong approach. If you can't explain why you're making a Facebook page it probably isn't going to work, even if you have no knowledge of Fa…
everything I read about maximising your web presence and impact told me that SMEs must integrate and embrace social media
He did his research. He's reporting back it doesn't work.
It seems to me that the entire point of him writing this article was to warn other SMEs to not take that advice at face value.