I know, I try to stay away from “gotcha” headlines. I mock them. But this is actually a thought I’ve had in my head for a some time. Is Facebook marketing pointless? All that time and effort put into your blog or brand page – is there a point?
Before I start, here’s a few things:
A) I feel really contradictory posting this, having discussed yesterday how I’m scheduling social media posts to maintain a presence.
B) I’m not a marketing person. I merely look at things from how it would work for me.
This morning as I was flicking through Twitter, I came across a link to an article called “Facebook Did Something And Marketers Will Screw It Up“.
The overlying point of the article is that the way to get (unpaid) reach on a Brand/Blog Page is always changing. Photos worked better. Then text worked better. Then this. Then that.
Now, to a degree, I get it. Technology changes. It changes fast. What works on day/week/month/year will not work the next. My problem with Facebook has always been that you need to dedicate a lot of time to get results. And there are other social media platforms that just don’t require that amount of effort.
(On a side note, I think I’ve just discovered I have issues with everyone who does secret algorithms and those who claim to know the way to beat them, but can’t actually tell you details on how.)
However, the point of the article I want to focus on is this:
If you want to read further on the statistic in orange, this is the page it links to.
To me, that is a huge percentage of users who are ignoring you.
And I’m one of them. I rarely like a Page from my personal Facebook profile. I don’t want brands filling up my timeline. My timeline is for people who I want to interact with – people I know. People I may see in real life. Or people who may now live in a different country, but who I want to keep in contact with.
I prefer to feel like I’m in control of the content shown to me on my social media feeds. I like brand and blog pages from my blog page. I know that’s “wrong”. I know I don’t “count” when I like from a page. However, this suits me. Plus, I comment on your blog using my blog name, I use my blog’s Twitter account to talk to you online, and I have a blog based Google Plus account: so why can’t I interact with you on Facebook using my blog? To me, Facebook is the odd one out here.
So that’s the WHY of how I interact that way. I suspect I’m not the only one who works that way. Now let’s look at the implications.
If only 32% of Facebook users will pay attention to a branded post, that feels like a lot of competition for you. I wonder how that compares to other social media services. Particularly ones like Pinterest, where a Pin being branded may not be initially obvious (not in the scammy way, but just because user names aren’t as prominent).
Is this where volume comes into play? 32% of Facebook is still a lot of people. Is it irrelevant that only 32% of Facebook will want to pay any attention to you, because 32% of 1.23 billion users is still huge?
Facebook’s longevity and frequent changes are always the factors that make me hesitate in investing my time into building a decent page over there. How long will Facebook really be around? 10 years has been great, but I’m always hearing anecdotal stories of more people who refuse to have Facebook at all, or who leave due to the privacy issues and changes.
Do you use Facebook to market your website? How do you view your time investment, the changes, and the amount of people who may actually want to read your page?
I got rid of Facebook a few months ago and wondered if it would be detrimental to my blog…it has not been….in the least. I do not miss it and it never brought me real traffic seeing that the percentage of people who actually see your post is limited.
Thanks for this post. It further reminds me that I made a good decision to get rid of it.
Kendwy @ MindofKiwi
I don’t think Facebook has ever really brought me any traffic…but I think as long as I have a personal Facebook account I may as well have a Facebook Page.
do have it, though lately I’m wondering if the time I devote to it ;particularly as I spend quite a chunk of time scheduling “shares” of others’ content (blogs, articles). I haven’t drilled down on my analytic to see how much traffic it gives me, but I’m 99% sure twitter gives me more.
I’m the opposite of you when it comes to likes- I like a lot of brands, small local businesses and also organizations and government pages. I like to know when things are happening 🙂
And this is where questions come into it – I feel like logic tells me to give up on Facebook (if I believe my own arguments) but I haven’t. There’s too much potential due to sheer size/volume of users.
I’m on facebook for my blog, although don’t see much benefit. It gets my family and friends over to the blog more often, but that’s about it. I only joined six months ago (blog is 2.5 years old) so I’m not sure if there’s more I could be doing.
That kind of brings up the other thought I have with Facebook – those with established communities & likes seem to still be going well, but it seems to be getting harder and harder to build likes and communities. So is it only a worthwhile platform for those who have been on it for a long time?
I agree Emily. I think my Facebook page is mainly just an additional arm to reach out to my personal network of family and friends. I did think of just posting links on my own personal FB page but felt uncomfortable at the thought of tooting my own horn. So I created the page so friends who DO want to follow my updates can. But the twist is, most friends don’t bother “liking” much less commenting on posts, so I suspect that my updates eventually show up less and less often on their feeds.
One thing that helped somewhat was to try and interlink updates on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram through apps and tools like hootsuite so I only need to post once and have the update shared across several platforms.
Since Facebook changed it’s algorithms most of my followers on Facebook rarely see my posts. Out of 300 fans, only 30-60 see the post and maybe one or two may read it and like the post. I think this article has raised some really good questions. Why spend so much time on a medium that doesn’t give good results? I think it also depends on what you use Facebook for. Sometimes it’s to push your blog’s brand name further. But it takes a lot of effort and at the end of the day, we don’t ‘own’ facebook likes do we?
To a degree, I understand Facebook’s situation. They don’t want people directed off site because that’s money that is lost to them in advertising from eyeballs on their site.
But also, the entire concept of a Page is that it is for something that is external (I’m sure there may be examples where this is false, but I think it’s a fairly safe generalisation to make). So is the problem really that Facebook are trying to monetise something that isn’t really ideal for monetisation?
In some way I think social media sites would be better if they ran on freemium models – those who want to pay a little get the ad-free (or algorithm-free) versions and get to control their content more. It just seems that would empower the users to keep using the site because they get to feel like they’re deciding to see what they want, rather than a computer deciding for them.
Or maybe the entire concept of applying clicks per view as adapted from traditional media is just not working but we don’t have a better system yet. I don’t have a background in advertising, and my background is in qualitative research and analysis, so I just feel numbers tell such a small part of the true story of something.