The Problem with Facebook (for Marketers)
Maybe “300,000,000” — the recently-announced number of Facebook users — represents some kind of tipping-point, because in recent weeks I’ve had more frequent conversations with marketers about “what to do about” the popular social network.
These conversations have evolved from, “Oh, Facebook is for college kids,” to “People 35–and-over are the fastest demographic on Facebook,” to “Whatever else you wanna say about it … 300 million is a big number.” So that’s how the question now becomes “what to do about” Facebook.
First off, as always, if your customers and prospects are not on Facebook, there’s no need to blow-out some expensive approach. Beware of Shiny Object Syndrome. But with 300 million users, the odds that your stakeholders don’t hang out on Facebook at all are dwindling.
But here’s the trouble with Facebook: it’s a proprietary network. Yes, the Gods of Facebook have made it easier to find your branded page via Google. Yes, they’ve made it easier to find your content from within the network. But notice how these initiatives have aided Facebook, more than you? The SEO effect for your www.company.com domain is nominal. By participating on Facebook you are potentially directing traffic from your www domain to Facebook’s domain instead. That’s Problem #1.
Problem #2 with this very popular, proprietary network is that the rules change pretty frequently, and are too-often not well-thought-out. And there’s little the average Corporate Marketer can do about it.
One of the reasons the Web flourished from Day One? There were no capricious overlords mucking about: for as much as we sometimes bemoaned its Wild West nature in the early days, the Web’s unilateral anarchy allowed best practices to emerge organically. The million dollars you spent on a Facebook Page could be thrown out the window. Sorry, it’s in the Terms of Service.
I am not trying to warn marketers off of Facebook. Not at all. I am suggesting that this network represents an “alternate reality” on the Web, with a separate rule-set and risks.
Our general advice to clients is to NOT spend a fortune on designing Facebook pages that could change at any time, at Facebook’s whim. Instead, when marketing on Facebook we tend to advocate for a lightweight, low-cost approach to community-building plus a nuanced blend of outreach campaigns, widgets, advertising, contests, etc. that would appeal to and empower the Facebook community, and ideally drive traffic from Facebook to the client’s official web domains.
Got a different point of view? Lemme know!
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Some good points, Todd. We always tell clients not to start with the technology. That’s the last step. Start with the people, then the business objectives and see where they align. If that’s Facebook, then great, why is it Facebook.
That will tell you if you’re trying to build a long-term community, have a short-term contest, both, neither, something in between.
But we see this all the time, with YouTube, with Twitter, with Facebook. You’re right: beware the shiny object syndrome.
Todd,
Enjoyed this post. I’d just add that the way we approach FB with clients it to use it as a satellite (same with Twitter, MySpace, etc) to hopefully get users to the clients’ own website, blog, or landing page. We’ve had great luck reaching out to customer via FB (where they’re already comfortable interacting) but the trick is to get them to take an action moves them to ‘our house’ to interact.
Hi Todd,
Great post (saw the tweet first…)
Prob 1; If there are 300 million users and the majority are from US, how important for that audience is SEO in the first place? I preach the value of SEO all the time, but in the case of FB, what does it matter? Agreed it may be taking away from the corp website, but to your point if the content is light (which most fan pages are) and the CTAs are strong to go elsewhere (the real goal), then I feel as though you are actually satisfying your clients/customers needs by offering your information in a place they feel comfortable hanging out (so to speak).
Prob 2: It’s very easy to stuff HTML into the site and have one truly branded page. Harley has done a great job of this (C.C. Chapman, I believe?). Maybe you don’t need to go to that extent but it’s not that hard. Also what is the difference with FB and when they change browser versions and standards or HTML? We all end up adapting each and every time.
Sorry, I am an optimist at hart
.
But to you last point, you have to have a vision, with priorities (which unfortunately is really lacking sometimes with clients) and that really drives the path.
Thank you for all the insight, I have been learning a lot from you.
Best,
Jonathan
Good article. I think the hardest thing about Facebook for my clients is that they don’t understand the interactive marketing angle. There’s a misnomer that you can just throw up a FB page, get fans and see automatic success.
Part of the issue is too that the “300million” users thing isn’t exactly honest as well as often it’s sided with “Facebook now larger than America in population”. That’s all fine and good if that means that all 300million of these people are accounted for individuals and not including dual accounts, spammers and bots.
As well, just the same if you look at population, just because America has Xmillion citizens, it doesn’t mean that being in America suddenly promises your ability to have every one of those citizens hear and react to your message. I think explaining it that way has helped a lot more as of late as they feel all they have to do is “be on Facebook” and they’re suddenly able to check “Social Marketing” off their to-do list.
I think that for some brands, it’s not very important whether the users go to the company’s site or Facebook Fan page. They want to keep the users happy and engaged, to communicate with them or to offer support. But I do think that they have to keep an eye on the company’s site, because it’s the place where they have control over the content. What if in 5 years a platform like this vanishes? or they lose the content put there?
About the second problem, people and companies are a little worried because the rules change. But perhaps Facebook will learn from his past experiences and think more when they take a decision, or ask.
really great post Todd, as you’ve seen this opened a good conversation
Codruta
Facebook (any social work) is where one should bring/interact wth current customers. Esblishing and demostrating a wonderful “digtal” relationship should cause a gain in new customers through “social word of mouth” i.e. sharing, friend invites, etc.
Does a phony fan ad really build a long lasting relationship? Does a marketer really want a relationship? The world is smaller and social. Will big company be out “friended” by the corner store?
This is a very informative post! I don’t agree with Facebook’s whole “we change when and how we want to, regardless of what you think” thing. I have to admit thought, I do use it every day.
I think that there is risks in everything we do. Of course, by using these social media websites doesnt help quite a bit do to the fact that people are there to interact with their friends and not look for a certain product.
The best way to do that is to have a blog like every company should because it is the best way to interact with your customers and you get to let them know that you’ve just publish an article.