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Last week I had a call about the biggest myths of marketing on Facebook. One myth I mentioned I see discouraging small business owners is that “Facebook alone will get you clients and customers.” This would be wonderful if it was true of course.
Do people get clients and customers as a result of being on Facebook? Absolutely. But throwing up a profile and expecting the money to roll in is not going to happen. You’d be surprised how many people end up discouraged because they’ve been on Facebook a good while and they are not getting results. It’s because they don’t understand how Facebook fits into their overall marketing picture.
It’s about consumers CONSUMING what it is you are putting out there—which essentially, is content. You are steadily and gradually building momentum from relationships, the know like and trust factor and word of mouth–which leads to traffic, to subscribers and eventually to sales.
Facebook is excellent for establishing credibility and expertise, for exposing your brand, boosting your visibility in front of your target market and even for market research—finding out what people want and need so that you can then go create and package those solutions and give it them.
Honestly, there is NO faster way to create credibility and brand recognition and quickly connect to hundreds of thousands of people who are looking for what it is you offer.
So what is the ultimate goal? Traffic. Before you even get on Facebook, you MUST have a website or blog to drive people to FIRST. You need to be able to continue to build those relationships OUTSIDE of Facebook. And the best way to do that is to have a way to get people on your list.
People don’t buy from you right off of Facebook. They also don’t buy from you the first time they visit your site, right? You have to build up that know, like and trust. But Facebook is amazing for building that familiarity and credibility and for driving people to your site so they can get to know even more about what it is that you do.
What has been your experience on Facebook? Does it drive a lot traffic back to your site? Do you see it increasing your blog or newsletter subscribers? Let me know your thoughts.
Photo Credit: benstein
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been amazed by how many people use Facebook. It really has outpaced a lot of other applications. I know a lot of people prefer Facebook over email.
I haven’t used it much yet, but I pretty much limit my time for social media. That said, Facebook seems like one of the more useful connection channels.
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@J.D.–”Facebook–the email killer.”
200+ million peeps and growing…
Every empire has it’s time in the sunshine Christine but ifacebook’s true strength will come when it faces the storm of a truly worthy competitor, to date there hasnt been one but I am certain there are contenders being built right now…
Bainzy, agreed. The human mind is always looking for the next best thing. We are always looking for the “what can you do for me in the next nano-second” factor with any technology. It was only 3 years ago that MySpace was at its peak, and 3 years before that Friendster. Now, MySpace has had to lay off people and Friendster has had to move shop to Australia. They failed in capture the next nano-second. What Facebook has done differently from a development perspective is build a framework capable of evolving by allowing third party application development. That’s smart. Let other people do the free marketing. It’s no different than the Apple App Store concept and look at its popularity.
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@bainzy–Definitely, it may be something else instead this time next year. I think we’ve learned that from MySpace and others.
@Chang–Yes, as pointless as most of them are, the apps on Facebook have made all the difference.
depending on the business there are other elements to take into consideration. since a user can have a personal profile, a facebook group or a facebook fan page, it would behoove the small business owner to figure out how they may integrate all or part of them. facebook targeted ads can also help. we’ve had success putting ads for clients, but again it all depends on what you’re selling.
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