Jul 10
28

Can social media be profitable? Part 3: Facebook

17 Comments

I’ve gotta be honest with you. I’ve been dreading writing this post and feel I’ve backed myself into a corner with this 3 part series.

If you can’t tell already, I’m NOT a fan of Facebook as a marketing strategy. Honestly, who is? I consult small businesses on a daily basis and have yet to hear 1 success story about marketing on Facebook.

But wait… before you write this post off as just a rant, I promise to give you my best effort at providing a useful and objective review. And, if you haven’t already done so, check out my view on blogs and Twitter.

First Up: The Pros About Facebook

You know you’ve done this before: Often I will log on to my Facebook account for a “few minutes” and end up spending a 1/2 hour or more browsing and sending messages. Well there’s something to that. Read on…

Traffic (and lots of it)

If Facebook has one thing going for it, it’s what we in the marketing industry call “eyeballs.” Check out these ginormous numbers about FB:

  • More than 500 million active users
  • 50% of active users log on every day
  • People spend 700,000,000,000 minutes on FB per month

I could have said 700 billion but it all those zeros have more of an impact! Also, Facebook.com is one of the few sites that can boast a perfect Google PageRank of 10. It is definitely an authority site.

Facebook Ads

As their version of Google AdWords, Facebook has monetized their site with ads. Here are the benefits I see…

  • Choose how you pay for your ad, whether by click (PPC) or view (CPM).
  • Control your budget on a campaign and/or daily basis.
  • My Favorite: Extreme targeting by location, age, gender, relationship status and interests (beat that AdWords!).

The Cons

Again, I’m going to leave my feelings out of it. These are strictly professional points of view:

SEO

In my opinion, Facebook sucks as far as search engine optimization goes. There are those out there that swear by it as an SEO strategy (and are happy to sell you a course at the same time) but I don’t think it’s worth the effort.

As I write this post, Google claims they have about 1,030,000,000 indexed pages for Facebook – that’s a lot!! But, have you noticed that when looking for something on a search engine, Facebook pages rarely show up?

True, if you happen to be searching for the EXACT name of a person or business, their FB page will often display itself in the search results. But when it comes to searching for keywords, FB pages are a rare breed.

Time Consuming

For the same reason why I like it Facebook for its ads, I also hate it as a marketing strategy. Let me explain.

Creating a Facebook page for your company is a branding strategy. In other words, if you’re going to see sustained business from Facebook, it will likely be a long time down the road. That’s what branding is… marketing for the future.

If your a small business owner or entrepreneur like me, you’re probably wearing multiple hats and only have so much time, money and resources to spare for such a slow return on investment. Well, that’s what Facebook is… work now, benefit later.

I don’t know about you, but I just can’t afford to wait for profits that may or may not materialize. I need a response now with faster results and profitable returns sooner than later.

The Verdict on Facebook

Its  a split decision. Facebook can be a great marketing strategy for its ads but lousy on the other hand for SEO and direct response.

Tell me, what’s your take? Have you generated a steady stream of business from FB?

~Brodie

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Posted by Small Business Marketing Ideas 17 Comments

17 Responses to "Can social media be profitable? Part 3: Facebook"

  • Boise Orthodontist says:
    July 29, 2010 at 9:44 am

    Not to mention that facebook uses the NOFOLLOW attribute on all their outbound links!

    Steve

  • digital fm transmitter review says:
    July 30, 2010 at 6:28 am

    I don’t know about you, but I just can’t afford to wait for profits that may or may not materialize. I need a response now with faster results and profitable returns sooner than later.

    Craig

  • Anonymous says:
    July 31, 2010 at 1:07 am

    I’m a bit allergic to Facebook because I don’t like the idea of putting information about myself online for bad elements to exploit. The thing is, I am very close to opening an account. I provide article writing services and somehow I get this feeling that having a FB account will make promoting my services so much easier. But I still don’t like FB…

    • Waco Dentist says:
      August 15, 2010 at 1:16 am

      Allergic? Interesting word choice!!

      I don’t think that a patient is going to come to me for their dental work simply because they noticed me on Facebook. For it to work, it would take multiple contacts and impressions of my name or logo for them to even know I’m there, let alone use me as their dentist in Waco, TX.

      That’s why I do all sorts of different marketing strategies for my Waco dental practice… all at the same time.

      Dave

  • Anonymous says:
    August 3, 2010 at 3:59 am

    NoFollow at Facebook is not so bad, imho.
    Most unattractive is open informatioan about anybody.
    I don’t like Facebook.

  • William Atkin says:
    August 3, 2010 at 5:08 pm

    Facebook can be great if used properly. The problem lies with people who spam.

  • Virginia Criminal Attorney says:
    August 4, 2010 at 6:56 am

    I believe that the approach to social media with the mindset of someone who is there simply to contribute really valuable information with the community! Give inspiration, teach, empower. Give people enough love and wisdom that they will look forward to your updates! Make them miss you if you’re not around! That’s really the only way you will ever be profitable with social media. I do hope you learned something from it.

    David

  • Lyndon says:
    August 6, 2010 at 1:44 am

    Great information, thanks for sharing this. I have been looking for it for a while now and it really helps me out and my website.

  • Telemarketing says:
    August 7, 2010 at 2:32 am

    Hey, this is Eric. Just stumbled upon your blog and find it quite interesting and informative. And particularly regarding this post, I thank you for reminding this point about the SEO-effectiveness of the results from Facebook from Google SERPs. Really this is a point to be noted especially when Google has so many pages indexed from Facebook. However, the main benefit derived in promotion from Facebook, I feel, is the brand recognition and the traffic which comes only from FB.

  • Chris Wright says:
    August 8, 2010 at 9:35 am

    I am with you on this one, i have set up many campaigns for clients some work and some do not. That said one thing i am certain of if you have someting valuable of informative to say or have a good product your clients will want to know everything about you and will sign up in numbers. Viral marketing is a tool that should not be overlooked.

  • eSilverBullet Affiliate Tools says:
    August 9, 2010 at 10:51 am

    I agree on the split decision. Facebook is a bit of a hybrid. It acts like Google’s AdSense in that you pay for clicks, but people aren’t necessarily searching for you. It can target demographics better than a newspaper or magazine, but I think people are more accustomed to tuning out ads on Facebook than they are in print. And Facebook doesn’t charge per performance the way typical affiliate marketing does.

    That said, a company should approach it like they would with any of their advertising dollars: allocate some of the pie to Facebook, then closely monitor the results. If you see a positive ROI, keep it up. If not, move on.

    Adam

  • Anonymous says:
    August 9, 2010 at 10:06 pm

    If you get the right ta, for facebook, it could do wonders for you, but the problem lies in which you don’t know if someone will post good things or bad things. Its a hurt/help problem.

    Evasive Media

  • Minneapolis Marketing says:
    August 10, 2010 at 4:06 pm

    I have had a lot of success using facebook for my clients. There is obviously no value in just posting your links on your business page but facebook should be used in campaigns for most businesses. Using facebook you can promote your content to a huge and diverse audience. As that audience discovers and reads your content they will be likely to link to it themselves on their personal/business web properties.
    Also by getting your customers involved on your business’s facebook page you will be able to constantly inform them of new product/service offerings. Keeping them up to date will help in customer retention and improve the lifetime value of your customers.
    -Dustin

  • Seo Bever says:
    August 16, 2010 at 3:11 pm

    I like the idea of extremely targeting method used by FB for it’s ads though. Still, from people I know there is not much return of investment (ROI) though. Is beating so far adwords but only for this reason, for anything else adwords is at the top. One reason for “failure” of FB in ads is that is hard to change the mentality of millions of users who don’t see any further than google adwords when is coming to PPC, e method considered to be efficient and largely used.
    -Vic

  • Darrell says:
    August 17, 2010 at 9:01 am

    I think in order to use Facebook effectively it has to be a part of your overall marketing strategy. If it’s your primary source of seo then you will be out of luck. Facebook has been a great tool for me to stay in touch with my past clients and build referrals based on that.

    Darrell, Peachtree City mortgages

  • dog training books info says:
    August 24, 2010 at 4:44 am

    Particularly regarding this post, I thank you for reminding this point about the SEO-effectiveness of the results from Facebook from Google SERPs. Getting your customers involved on your business’s facebook page you will be able to constantly inform them of new product/service offerings.

    Steve

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