Two-Faced: The Promise and Pitfalls of Facebook
September 2009
By The Author
With 250 million members and growing, Facebook is a siren’s song for marketers and business owners. Its allure lies in its promise of instantaneous access to legions of followers, but therein also lies the danger.
With all the hype surrounding social media, misconceptions about Facebook’s capabilities as a marketing tool are rampant. It’s easy to latch on to the seemingly obvious benefits while overlooking the hidden perils.
Before you steer your brand on a course to social media suicide, let’s take a closer look at some of the nefarious half-truths that permeate the buzz about Facebook and sort out perception from possibility.
Facebook is free advertising.
This much is true: It doesn’t cost one dime to create an account or set up a fan page on Facebook. But that’s where the free ride ends.
In fact, Facebook is neither free nor advertising. Advertising in the most traditional sense of the word implies one-way communication. It represents a carefully polished, thoroughly sanitized version of a company’s image that is presented to a statistically favorable audience through structured media outlets.
Social media by definition demands interaction. As a result, using any social media platform as a tool to grow your business requires a significant investment of time and effort – precious resources of which many companies today have little to spare – to nurture relationships and cultivate a following.
You can’t approach Facebook as you would an advertising campaign with tidy short-term objectives and a finite lifespan. Instead, you must be willing to make a long-term commitment and have the patience to let the return on your investment develop over time.
Furthermore, unlike traditional advertising, Facebook is not simply a vehicle for self-promotion. Creating a Facebook page is like standing on a soapbox. You can gather a crowd and take the stage, but if you do nothing but talk endlessly about yourself, your products and your achievements, everyone will quickly leave and go elsewhere.
Facebook is an easy way to connect with your customers.
Yes, your 10-year-old son and your 85-year old grandmother can set up a Facebook page. The developers behind Facebook invested untold hours and resources in a simple, user-friendly interface in order to ensure just that.
Facebook is not the ends; it's the means. However, the act of creating a page is not the point. It’s not the same as putting up a billboard on the side of the road where the end goal is to gain attention by the simple fact of existing in the space. You must do more than establish a presence; you must commit yourself to being fully present on the site.
The gift that Facebook and other social media sites have given to marketers and business owners is removing the middlemen of print and broadcast media that were once your only lines of communication with your customers.
However, having the ability to communicate directly does no good if you do not use it to your advantage by actively engaging your followers. How do you do this? Offer them something of value, start a conversation, provide a forum for meaningful interaction, post diverse kinds of content.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about what you would respond to. Think about what all of your fans might have in common and build your following around that. Your Facebook page might not even focus on your business or industry at all. That’s fine, as long as what’s there is entertaining or thought provoking or relatable – something that people can latch onto and encourage others to do the same.
In short, Facebook is not the ends; it's the means.
There’s no harm in trying Facebook.
You’ve heard all the chatter about Facebook, and you’ve decided to take the plunge, thinking you’ll figure it out as you go.
Stop right there. The problem with taking a trial-and-error approach is that there are no take-backs in the world of social media. Your mistakes are on display for all to see and can be unearthed again and again. Post content that is poorly conceived or badly executed, and you take a chance at being the Internet’s next viral sensation (and not in a good way).
Of course, that’s the worst-case scenario. But the indisputable truth of the matter is that your efforts can backfire if you don’t come out of the gate with a strong, clearly defined strategy and commit to sustaining your efforts over time.
There are no take-backs in the world of social media. As a marketer or business owner, you can’t afford to enter into Facebook lightly. Lackluster communication will damage your brand. Just as easily as you can update your status, your fans can hide you from their feed. The more eagerly you flood your followers with content that’s not relevant or lacks creativity, the more you risk alienating your once loyal customers.
Take a step back and think about how your activity on Facebook reflects on you and what it reveals to your customers about your motives. For example, focusing on self-promotion sends a clear message to your fans that you have no interest in them or desire to forge a meaningful connection.
Remember, everything that you broadcast over Facebook becomes part of your brand legacy.
The more fans, the better.
As is the case in most areas of business, there is strength in numbers on Facebook. Or is there?
Without question, Facebook has the numbers. Over 50 million new users joined in the past three months alone, leaving marketers who cling to the traditional media metrics of reach and demographics salivating.
However, Facebook’s true strength is not in the exposure it offers to this vast sea of humanity. It’s in the platform’s strength as a channel of unobstructed communication between you and your customers as well as between your customers and their network of friends.
The number of fans you have on Facebook is meaningless in and of itself. Just as it takes next to no effort on your part to create your page, it requires nothing but the click of a mouse for someone to “fan” you. But if that is the last interaction you have with them, then it does nothing to improve your bottom line.
What you really need are loyal fans who are passionate about you and who are actively spreading the word about what you have to offer. You need to develop a following of people who are personally invested in your success.
It’s not about quantity; it’s about quality.Wired magazine founder Kevin Kelly describes on his blog the importance of what he calls “
True Fans,” defined as “someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.” Once you have committed yourself to Facebook, it is imperative that you seek out these types of fans and feed them meaningful content that they can spread like wildfire throughout their various networks of family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances.
When it comes to fans and Facebook, it’s not about quantity; it’s about quality.
All of this is not to say that you shouldn’t view Facebook as a powerful grassroots marketing tool or that the challenges outweigh the benefits. However, it is to say that you shouldn’t blindly follow the masses to Facebook because you think it’s cheap, easy and free of risk. Instead, be realistic about the investment of time and effort required, cultivate a loyal group of real fans and communicate with them in a way that is really engaging.
As always, if you’re not sure where to start and need help making sense of it all, please feel free to call us. We can help you separate Facebook fact from fiction and put you on the right track to using social media as a tool for building meaningful customer relationships.
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