Love it or hate it, Facebook is here to stay. Although most people use their Facebook accounts to connect with friends and family and even to sometimes play games, people are also given the option to make a page, a feature which a lot of businesses have taken advantage of. When visiting a business's page, one has the option of "liking" a page, which allows the business to share their latest posts to the liker's (or fan's) news feed. Also, when someone likes a page, their friends are usually alerted to that person's like on their respective news feeds, allowing the page to spread awareness indirectly.
A page can post status updates to tell their fans new sales or company developments, as well as sharing its consumers' posts that promote that particular business. The business can also post pictures and videos, as well as links to other social media that it's involved in. A new feature of Facebook is the promotion button, which can be found on the bottom of status updates. Although I have not used this feature, Facebook claims that if one pays a small fee, that particular post will come to the forefront of a page or news feed, perhaps garnering more views from a fan or friend. This could be a particularly useful feature for pages, but since it's new, I'm not sure how widely used it is.
Fans, or even the page itself can share posts, pictures, and videos that are posted, as well as links. This is a great way of promoting one's business, because when a fan shares a post from your page, their friends will see it on their news feeds, and your business will thereby be promoted, and at no cost to you. If used correctly, Facebook can be a very effective marketing tool, especially with the no cost pricetag (unless you use the new promote function), as well as the sheer "shareability" of your content. Here, Google and Coca Cola, two completely different and well known brands, use Facebook differently to promote their companies:
http://www.facebook.com/googleforyou
http://www.facebook.com/cocacola
Coca Cola has a lot more content than Google, as well as more likes, showing that content is key when it comes to social media sites. But even though Facebook can be a useful tool for marketing your company, it can also spell disaster. If just one badly written or offensive post/picture/video/comment is seen by enough people, which it most likely will, it can effectively ruin your online image, and destroy your brand trust with your fans. It is said that nothing spreads faster than bad news, and with the magnitude of people using social media, that holds even more true today. If that one bad post gets seen by one person and offends them, and they post a negative comment about your company, that negative comment will spread like wildfire, especially since the average Facebooker has about 229 friends (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2262/facebook-ipo-friends-profile-social-networking-habits-privacy-online-behavior). Even if only ten of those friends share the original post or like it, then their respective friends will still see it, further spreading the negativity. It is therefore necessary to be very careful of what your business posts on its page, and maintaining a professional image is a must!
Facebook also allows companies to quickly respond to its customers, giving a more personal touch to the brand. Here listed are two examples (which were chosen just because they were quite humorous):
http://cheezburger.com/6490882048
http://cheezburger.com/6431689728
-Megan Commings
Great post, but I disagree with you on one thing. I don't think facebook is here to stay. It is the lastest shiny object, but since companies realize that advertising on facebook is not as effective as once thought and the poor business decisions of the Zuck, I am not sure if it will last many more years. As social media evolves, most companies don't keep up. And I know that FB is doing ok now, it only takes the next big thing to push it out of the way.
ReplyDeleteChristopher Tod
Dig2k
Well, I didn't mean that Facebook will stay around forever, because like you said, it's the latest shiny object. But I think it would be easier and less risky for businesses to advertise on Facebook instead of jumping onto the next social media platform that comes around in case it goes the way of MySpace.
ReplyDelete-Megan Commings
I agree with Christopher. Facebook is the "it" thing right now and is a easy cheap way to promote your business, but a lot of people are being turned off from facebook. With so many negative stories happening related to Facebook, people just don't want to deal with it. I can't count how many news stories I've seen where people get into altercations because of something said on Facebook. Even murders. If anything Facebook is a great tool for police because of the evidence it leaves for them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Christopher and Daryl with how Facebook is only doing well now. I don't know a lot about Facebook, but I have always been somewhat anti-Facebook. Something about it just gets on my nerves whenever I hear it mentioned. In my opinion it's not the latest and greatest and will soon be replaced with something even "better". Phases come and go, and I think that Facebook is starting its decline. I like privacy and for me, being connected with a social network like Facebook just in my mind doesn't seem private. No matter how high the security or how secure the privacy policy is. Once you post something on the Internet, its there, nothing you can do about it.
ReplyDelete-Kendall Fagan