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Not Every Business Needs A Facebook Page

Facebook has 699 million daily active users (as of June 2013), but according to Facebook’s own estimate, 80% of them are outside of the United States and Canada. And, although a lot of businesses are on the social network, not all businesses do well there.

What many businesses don’t understand is that Facebook is really a “social” network, where people come to talk and share information. Service businesses rarely make much of an impact and to use any social media successfully it requires dedicated amounts of time and diligence that a business owner either has to put in or should hire someone to do.

The most successful businesses on Facebook fall into these seven categories:

  • Retail (well-known stores, odd or unusual products)
  • Bars and Nightclubs
  • Restaurants
  • Big, nationally known brands (Coca-Cola, Nike)
  • Sports teams (and a recent article disputed this)
  • Actors/Celebrities
  • Musicians/Bands

In May of 2013 , the article Maybe You Don’t Need Social Media to be Successful states:

One USA Today report reveals that social media may not be the answer for everyone…About 61% of small businesses don’t see any return on investment on their social-media activities.

In the post, When Small Businesses Shouldn’t Do Social Media, social media and marketing specialist Stephanie Schwab confesses:

As someone who is deeply entrenched in, and very much in love with, social media, it’s very hard to say ‘Don’t do social media.’ But honestly – more and more, I find myself telling some of these entrepreneurs and business owners that social media may not be the most important thing for them to do….

Others point out that there are some huge, successful businesses that don’t use social media at all, Apple being the most unexpected example.

Also, ignoring your target market is one of the biggest mistakes local businesses make. Before jumping into the social media venue, first find where your prospective customers are who are looking for the services you offer.

The Yellow Pages used to be the place to advertise in, but is rapidly being replaced by online directories. There are online Yellow Pages, but again, they are often confusing, and sometimes have incorrect or outdated information.

Ask your current customers to post reviews for you on websites like Yelp, MojoPages.com, and TripAdvisor.com (they now show businesses as well as restaurants). Make sure you list your website in Yahoo Local, Bing Local, and Google Plus (a.k.a. Google Places).

If your business handles commercial services, such as industrial plumbing or cleaning, be sure to get a company page on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is one of the biggest business-to-business networks online today.

Many Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations and local networking groups have websites

Local businesses

Local businesses (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

and an online business directory for their members. This is an excellent resource for prospective clients, because they will continue to refer you to their friends and colleagues.

And don’t forget about offline marketing. If you can find a charity or other non-profit corporation that is running an event in your area, see if you can be a sponsor. Many of these organizations will list their sponsors in their printed material, signs and banners at the event itself. Or, you can see about sponsoring a local conference or fund-raising event.

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The Social Pushmepullyou

Pushmepullyou again
Image by Chrstopher via Flickr

Do you remember the Pushmi-pullyu from Hugh Loftings’  original Dr. Doolittle series? This was a two-headed creature, with a head at each end. Facebook and Twitter are very similar to this animal.

Twitter is the “push me”  part of it.  Twitter, Plurk, and other micro-blogging applications push users to click on links. This is due in part to the 140 character limit, and in part to the way many people use micro-blogs.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a pull technology. Once you’re pulled into the website, it never wants to let you go. This is due to the nature of the stickiness of the site, the games that are found there, and the many other nooks and crannies that you can explore there. There are several other social networks that do this as well, but Facebook is the best example of this.

The trick is to use these two types of technology to your best advantage. An example of this would be to use the micro-blogs to push people to your Facebook page (the former “fan page”), and then make that Facebook page as sticky as possible. Finding the right balance can be hard. What you don’t want to do, is to create only a Facebook page, and no website for the user to ultimately end up on. Again, going back to a previous post, social media is transient in nature. Whatever pages you create on social networks may not be there in the future, or may become inaccessible. So, my advice to you is to cover all your bases.

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Social Media or SEO?

Social-Media-Campaign
Image by Gary Hayes via Flickr

I have been noticing a worrisome trend lately. Many businesses have decided to  go with social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) before making sure that 1) their website is fully optimized for users (or search engines), or 2) that their website is fully functional.

While I agree that using social media is a very useful technique for pushing people to a website, there needs to be a fully usable website on the other end. There is nothing so frustrating as following a link in Twitter, only to discover that the information you’re interested in can’t be found on that particular page.

Another problem is that social media is transient in its very nature. What is popular today may not be popular tomorrow. You must make sure that your website will be found by people who are not only active in social media, but who are looking for your site in the search engines using particular keywords.

Before you jump on the social media bandwagon, you must make sure that your website is not only user-friendly, but search engine friendly as well. Optimizing your website is crucial for the long term. I know, I know, doing SEO on your website is not as exciting as posting to your friends on Twitter, but think of it as a necessity, as a way of standing out in the crowd of websites.

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