The Pifalls of using Facebook as a marketing tool.
by michaeltomlinson
In an earlier blog posting I already questioned the hype surrounding the importance of social media to marketers. The interesting aspect of that article was the crucial lack of conversion that occurs when a user simply views social media and does not purchase a good or service from the business.
This article is closely related to the previous post. It is based on Brian Porters recent report on the “10 Biggest Facebook marketing mistakes of 2011.” The key finding from the article is the reiteration that simply setting up some form of social media (In this case on Facebook) does not guarantee success. In fact if the campaign is relatively poor there is likely to be negative implications for the business.
In a brief summary of the report by Porter (2012) it is obvious that the key behind online marketing success is strategic relationship marketing with those who have taken the effort to be involved within your social media campaign. As Porter describes in his second mistake; It is not how many fans you may have, but how many you are able to reach. Therefore visibility is key to reaching consumers and increasing that all important conversion rate.
Another key consideration that is raised is the idea of “Quality of quantity”. It’s a pretty obvious recommendation but all too many social media campaigns swamp subscribers with posts that contain information that the viewers simply have no interest in. This acts to lower a pages “EdgeRank” and as such loses the Facebook group its all important visibility on a fans news feed.
So to conclude this post it is apparent once again that Social media is far more complex than many appear to understand. It must be used wisely and if not done so can be to the detriment of a company. Of course the actual impact of social media on a businesses performance is still questionable with many extraneous factors, however as Porters 10 tips show, there are methods to improve the ways in which a social media campaign is delivered which allow for a great chance of success.
*For all 10 tips on optimising performance on Facebook visit “10 Biggest Facebook marketing mistakes of 2011” available at: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2012/01/10-biggest-facebook-marketing-mistakes-of-2011/*
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Hey Michael,
Great post. I found this one to be particularly helpful because I think we just assume that companies nowadays need to get on all social media platforms to help with business, increase visibility, or improve their SEO. For our class project, an obvious recommendation is to get the client on social media but you never really consider the downfalls of using them or how they can ultimately be detrimental to the company if used incorrectly. These were some pretty sound tips and I think it’s so important to pass them on to anyone who you encourage to use social media as part of their marketing campaign. They’re great tools but it’s good to know how to use them properly and effectively. Thanks!