There’s no getting away from it, as the biggest social media network and with a monthly active user base of 1.43 billion, Facebook is booming (Kim, 2015). As the graph below shows, its miles ahead of other social networks and messenger apps, but with so many users and potential customers, how essential is it really for your business?

(Source: Kim, 2015)

According to Facebook (2015), its business pages can help to drive online sales, increase local sales and raise brand awareness, also enabling you to spread your message to a potentially new audience, make contact with customers and build relationships (Hansson et al., 2013).

The way businesses utilize Facebook can be split into two main areas – business pages and paid for banners and adverts – however this blog post focuses on business pages.

According to Hansson et al. (2013), one of the major benefits of utilizing Facebook is the relatively low cost, enabling companies of all sizes to use the site to achieve their branding and marketing goals, whilst potentially reaching millions of customers. However, whether this is actually feasible surely depends on the amount of people who ‘like’ your page, as the content created is only really seen by those who do so.

Creating product pages allows for customers to give their own feedback, and therefore knowledge sharing, increasing product awareness and enabling word of mouth (WOM) marketing. This is also useful as customers generally prefer reviews from customers who have already used the product rather than professional critics (Seung-A, 2012). Although, in the same way this can be beneficial, it can also be detrimental as customers could leave negative reviews and comments for your audience to see, potentially damaging your businesses reputation. As such, proper page management is needed, including dealing with negative responses correctly rather than ignoring or deleting (Palmer and Koenig-Lewis, 2009 and Champoux et al., 2012).

Then there is the question of whether marketing to customers on a ‘personal’ network is the right way to do business? There are great considerations to be made regarding the ethics of advertising and marketing to your customers through a ‘personal’ social network, some people may believe it is unethical and an invasion of their privacy, however many people believe that a marketing message is best hidden within social media as opposed to direct marketing, so maybe Facebook is the better option (Palmer & Koening-Lewis, 2009).

So with such a large user base, how can you be sure your target audience is on Facebook? Well if your business is aimed at young people then using the social network may be a waste of time. It was widely reported that it lost 11million of its users aged 13-17 between 2011 and 2014, thought mainly to be because of the trend in their older relatives joining the site (Olson, 2013 and Matthews, 2014). However Griffin (2015) says that 71% of teens aged 13-17 say they continue to use the site, so perhaps it’s not all bad.

So should your business be on it?

I actually have some experience of using Facebook business pages myself, having created one for an amateur theatre group during my time as publicity manager, as seen below.

For us it worked well as a source of free advertising, but with virtually no marketing budget, we were restricted in terms of promoting the page. Even today it has a relatively poor 133 likes, and run by volunteers, the group struggle to post relevant, engaging content on a regular basis.

But should that really be a barrier? One of the most successful brands using Facebook is McDonalds, but they use it in a different way to some of the advice offered here.

The brand has over 56million likes on its site, yet despite this blog and most agreeing that frequent, engaging content is key to engaging customers; McDonald’s seemingly posts very little yet still has high customer engagement with several thousand likes when they do post (Moth, 2013). However, this is likely because of the strong global brand that already exists, whereas smaller businesses (such as my amateur theatre group) are likely to struggle.

McDonald’s clearly sees the value in sticking to product focused sales messages and wants to increase this, looking to roll out 14,500 Facebook pages by 2015 for each of its US outlets, with the goal of being able to connect to its customers in real time and deliver relevant, local content for them (Ghosh, 2014).

So how do you get it right? Hansson et al. (2013) found that generally the best way to utilize Facebook for your business is to have an active profile that is in keeping with your company and brand overall and that provides users with up-to-date content and information with a clear purpose.

Still unsure? For more on the benefits and drawbacks of using Facebook for your business, check out this article.

REFERENCES

Champoux, V., Durgee, J. & McGlynn, L. (2012) Corporate Facebook pages: when ‘fans’ attack, Journal of Business Strategy. Vol 33, Issue 2, Pages 22-30

Facebook (2015) Facebook for business [Online] <https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Ghosh, S. (2014) McDonald’s to roll out 14,500 Facebook pages by 2015. Marketing Magazine, 16^th October 2014 [Online] <http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1317413/mcdonalds-roll-14500-facebook-pages-2015> [Accessed 15^th April 2015]

Griffin, A. (2015) Teen social media use: death of Facebook and Google Plus greatly exaggerated. The Independent, 10^th April 2015 [Online] <http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/teen-social-media-use-death-of-facebook-and-google-plus-greatly-exaggerated-10168248.html> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Hansson, L., Wrangmo, A. & Solberg Søilen, K. (2013) Optimal ways for companies to use Facebook as a marketing channel, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. Vol 11, Issue 2, Pages 112-126

Kim, E. (2015) This one chart shows how Facebook dominates online communication. Business Insider, 13^th April 2015 [Online] <http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-dominates-online-communication-2015-4?r=US> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Matthews, C. (2014) More than 11 million young people have fled Facebook since 2011. Time, 15^th January 2014 [Online]<http://business.time.com/2014/01/15/more-than-11-million-young-people-have-fled-facebook-since-2011/> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Moth, D. (2013) How McDonald’s uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Econsultancy, 13^th March 2013 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/62329-how-mcdonald-s-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google/> [Accessed 15^th April 2015]

Olson, P. (2013) Teenagers say goodbye to Facebook and hello to messenger apps. The Guardian, 10^th November 2013 [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Palmer, A. & Koenig-Lewis, N. (2009) An experimental, social network-based approach to direct marketing, Direct Marketing: An International Journal. Vol 3, Issue 3, Pages 162-176

Seung-A, A.J. (2012) The potential of social media for luxury brand management, Marketing Intelligence & Planning. Vol 30, Issue 7, Pages 687-699