Should Your Business Give Up on Facebook?
“Since Facebook is not showing our updates to our fans, we have decided to move to Google+ (or Twitter, or whatever). Please join us there if you want to keep up with the latest.” Sniffle, sniffle.
Have you seen this on Facebook? I know I have, and I think it’s a little short-sighted. Rather than just giving up out of frustration, or because the “experts” say it’s a waste of time, let’s look at what’s behind all this quitting.
Why Businesses Are Leaving Facebook – Or Threatening to Leave
Organic reach is down – it’s pay to play on Facebook. Again, true. But since when was marketing actually free, anyway? If you want to get the kind of reach you were getting four years ago, you are going to have to pay. Depending on your business, and the results you get, it might be worth it for you.
Teens are quitting Facebook. Yes, it’s true. But unless your business caters only to teens, that shouldn’t matter a bit. Even if your best customer are in their teens, are ALL of them leaving Facebook? If you abandon your remaining teenaged fans, will they thank you for it?
What Facebook is Still Good For
We recently launched a campaign for a new client. Nearly 6% of the resulting leads came from Facebook. No other social network sent any leads. In the last several months, about 1% of our leads have come from Facebook. Not a lot, certainly, but not nothing, either.
And what about website traffic? For our site, nearly 2% of our website traffic in a recent period came from Facebook. Again, not huge, but I wouldn’t turn away the 621 visitors it brought in.
Facebook is still a good place to network with business contacts. In our industry, Facebook is still a very active place for finding new content and commenting on other’s blog posts. We keep in touch with our peers and get some great feedback and insights. Definitely worth sticking around for that alone.
Just being there and remaining active gives you added credibility. People have come to expect the business that they work with will be on Facebook. If you’re not there, it might be a red flag to some potential customers, depending on your industry.
Suggested Changes to Facebook Strategy
Facebook tab apps no longer get the attention they used to, so we don’t spend time on those anymore. If you look at your insights and find the same is true for your page, don’t feel bad letting them go.
Recent anecdotal studies show that sharing multiple photos in a post up your reach. We tried it yesterday (see below) and the update did receive more than twice the reach of other recent posts. Engagement was up, too. Try this on your own page, but make sure you’re posting multiple USEFUL images, and don’t be too disappointed when Facebook changes the rules again.
Don’t spend too much time coming up with things to share. Share your own content, and things that you were going to share on Twitter that you think would work on Facebook, too.
Is Facebook Worth it For You?
Look at what is working now, how much time you have to spend, where your customers are, and what your goals are. Look beyond the easy numbers (reach and engagement) to see if you’re getting real value from Facebook. But please, don’t just leave because you don’t like the new rules.
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