I have recently made a decision to not rely on Facebook for the marketing of any of my newsagency businesses.
I reached this decision based on recent behaviour by Facebook which reminded me that it is a corporation and not a community. As a corporation, Facebook will act in the interests of its shareholders first, as is required by law. This means businesses need to approach using Facebook as we would approach purchasing services from any corporation.
Since Facebook does not currently charge businesses, they are leveraging revenue in other ways, such as using data gathered through use of the site.
I expect that even when Facebook does charge businesses for their pages, they will continue to use activity data to leverage revenue for themselves.
With a Facebook marketing campaign I am reliant on Facebook for ensuring access to friends of my business. Other marketing channels do not rely on a third party in the same awl: mail telephone, email.
I don’t want to be at the mercy of a third party even if access to their service is free. It would be frustrating four a business to find that marketing plans are forced to change because of a change in policy or operations by Facebook.
Good luck to businesses using Facebook today. My only caution would be that they retain control of their marketing database and that they have a plan B for leveraging this should Facebook get in the wear of their activity.
A very interesting topic.
I use FB for sales listings and interest in my artisan glass work, but not as a subscriber. Just a page, rather than an advertiser.
The main problem I have is with personal FB friends using apps that demand your information in order to engage. I simply won’t do them.
It will be interesting to see what develops in terms of business pages down the track, though.
“With a Facebook marketing campaign I am reliant on Facebook for ensuring access to friends of my business.”
This sounds like you are saying “I will decide who is a friend of my business and contact them accordingly”, as opposed to the Facebook opt in model where people decide if they want to be friends. In online world this would be called SPAM.
Not at all Jim. My customers can opt in and say they want marketing from the business via email, TXT or other mediums, just as is the case with Facebook. With these other mediums I am not at risk as I am with Facebook.