Shelving the idea of your business on Facebook?
The business value of using Facebook
We said we would and we are. Two posts ago, we tackled the good/not-so-good of Instagram for Business. This time around, we take on the beast, the titanic, the infamous...Facebook.
What benefits does Facebook bring to a small business? Is it a good place to engage with your audience? Has it become just a complaints platform for brands? Initially, Facebook was designed to connect people with their friends and family. For businesses, it’s been a great tool that creates opportunities for in-depth engagement with your audience. Unlike Instagram, which relies on photos, with Facebook, businesses can create full business pages that are more copy-heavy, share media, and even host live-stream events. Today, there are more than two billion active monthly users on Facebook! From the perspective of business, that many users is a huge opportunity for marketing. Sounds attractive, doesn’t it? Let's dig into the pros and cons and find out what Facebook really has to offer..
The Good
Facebook is Addictive
We aren’t promoting addictive behavior, of course, but the numbers do not lie. According to Smart Insight, people tend to check their Facebook an average of eight times per day, compared to just six for Instagram and five for Twitter. It’s just where the people are. Facebook has 70% of U.S. adults signed up. Alternatively, 37% of U.S. adults are on Instagram. 24% are on Twitter. Ummm, WOW.
First Stop for Consumers
One of the first places your customers will look for information about your business is Facebook. So when a consumer goes to your Facebook page and sees that the last post was in September 2017, it looks bad. You might as well have told them, “We’ve gone under.” Customers use Facebook to learn general info like; are you still operating, what are your business hours, or if you have a website, and specific inquiries like; are dogs or children allowed, do you offer senior discounts, or how they can partner with you? Often, the Facebook Messenger app is how many of these inquiries are made.
Advertising Power
Instagram is owned by Facebook. Because of this, their ad tools are similar. Like Instagram, Facebook ads come with great targeting tools and you can really get into the nitty-gritty of exactly who your target audience is. This advertising interface is pretty easy to use, another plus. On top of all this, their ads are affordable. Depending on your campaign, you can spend as little as $2 a day advertising with Facebook.
Multiple Admins
Business pages on Facebook can add employees to build an admin team. This way, responsibilities can be shared and different admins can own their own roles. This is also a great solution for when you’re out of the office and offline but still need to engage with your audience. By sharing admin control among several users, the hassle of messily sharing login information and social media best practices is removed. Overall, it makes creating content simple and efficient.
The Not-So-Good
Organic Visibility is Hard to Come By
Organic visibility is how visible your business is online without the help of paid advertising. There are so many people and so much content on Facebook, so it makes visibility very competitive. Over the years, Facebook has gone back and forth on their priorities. Especially when it comes to how much attention they give to managing ad space and what they show their users. These days, Facebook strives to show people the content that is most relevant to them. Because of this, marketing content has taken a backseat, ensuring that Facebook holds to its original values of helping its users connect with friends and family.
Loss of Control
Businesses do have control of what appears on their public profile, but there is little control over who posts information about your business or what those posts contain. Unfortunately there is an abundance of controversial articles and strongly voiced opinions, straight-up internet trolls, hackers hoping to swindle, all strolling about on Facebook. In addition to these unsavories, your competitors, angry customers, or ex-employes can easily post nasty comments that end up on your Facebook wall.
Difficult to Engage
Unfortunately, users have to actually subscribe to a business’s page updates to keep receiving them if they don’t engage with you frequently. Additionally, Facebook users can also choose to unfollow or unsubscribe from posts while still counting as page audience (going back to Facebook’s core-value initiative). So, even when you promote your page to your audience, that content will be hidden to them. Because of this, engagement isn’t always easy and it’s hard to keep track of who your core customer base actually is.
The Takeaway
Businesses have several reasons to actively use Facebook, and at the very least have a small presence. Paid advertising can be frustrating and costly, but is also becoming par for the course in the world of social media. Compared to traditional advertising, digital advertising is relatively inexpensive and often, yields productive results.
We’ve found this helpful article explains a bit more about creating a Facebook business page if you decide it’s right for you. Like everything, there are alternatives to Facebook.
Previously, we talked about Instagram. We will provide insight on some of the others. But until then, we’d love to hear about your experience with using Facebook for your business.
