Is facebook for small business pointless..

_Brian

We were using Facebook quite a bit and getting reasonable engagement with posts.. but the change where business posts don't show in peoples timeline any more made things drop off completely..
We use it occasionally now and for competitions, but regular posts, I can't see the point really if they don't show without paying, am I missing the point for a business ??

Trojan

_Brian wrote: »

We were using Facebook quite a bit and getting reasonable engagement with posts.. but the change where business posts don't show in peoples timeline any more made things drop off completely..
We use it occasionally now and for competitions, but regular posts, I can't see the point really if they don't show without paying, am I missing the point for a business ??

What business are you in? I think the sector and type of business makes a huge difference.

It can be very useful for driving traffic to an email registration which starts a sales funnel. I haven't found it useful (or maybe just haven't the talent) to use a Page in the traditional social networking sense in my own B2B business, but I've seen them work very well in retail B2C.

thewhitecoats

Having your business on facebook was great because it was easy (and free) to advertise your products to your customers/followers. This change was obviously a way for facebook to generate revenue. Facebook users will rarely, if ever, search out posts if they are not presented to them on their wall, and facebook know this, hence forcing companies to pay to have their posts displayed back on their customers/followers walls, this was inevitable really. If having your company on facebook was good for your revenue then you now need to decide if the pay to display is financially viable. I think some of facebooks descisions (like this one) will lead to it's downfall, but we'll see.

EagererBeaver

It's worth it alone for being the business's details up and in the open - address, contact details, opening hours etc.

_Brian

EagererBeaver wrote: »

It's worth it alone for being the business's details up and in the open - address, contact details, opening hours etc.

Yes, but is there any point in spending time planning and doing regular posts if theyre not being shown..
Can just use it as a marketing tool when money is in the advertising budget

thewhitecoats

Basically you are hoping people are visiting your page through their own interest, so you can see if this is happening through the facebooks insights tool. If people are still visiting then obviously happy days and keep posting as normal. If your viewer numbers have dropped then regular posts (i.e. everyday) probably would not be worth it. It would be a good idea to look for viewer spikes on the graphs and target them.

So lets say your page views spike at the weekend, then try to have fresh posts ready for each weekend. If you continue to post every day and viewers only look at the weekend, then you may have posts from lets say Monday, that are pushed further down the page that go unnoticed. That is just how I would look at it, but again it's all about how many visits your still receiving, when you are receiving them and can you justify the time to cater for small numbers.

Trojan

I wrote a blog post yesterday about social traffic: https://www.websitedoctor.com/search-vs-social-traffic/

Bergmann

I wouldn't say it's completely pointless, lots of users will end up on your facebook page instead of your actual website so it's worth having some good content on there in case of that.

happycoach

Great post Trojan

LSB Marketing

I would agree that Facebook's value for many businesses (but not all) has been greatly reduced, such as the case with the OP, but it still does have great value.

As EagerBeaver stated, simply as a source of your business details it is well worth the few minutes it take to set up a page, especially if you don't have your own website. Also as a source of reviews it is invaluable, being probably the most common source of those five golden stars you see in your search results.

There is still a reason to generate your own content for Facebook, even if you are not paying to promote it, you should just be more selective and creative in what you produce. There still is organic reach on Facebook, its just not the same as it was, with FB filtering what people see on their timelines based on what it feels they want to see (and yes of course also to create a better advertising platform for themselves).

Creating multiple posts around the same content can also be very effective for increasing organic reach. For instance with a blog post with three distinct sections - you could create three different posts linking to each section of the post, with maybe another based on images used. Then release those over the course of a few weeks. Try to encourage commenting as much as you can and of course choose appropriate times to respond to those comments. This will all help to increase the visibility of your content.

LSB Marketing

Just to add, you can also repost your content in its entirety several months down the line (if it's still relevant that is). Two of the regular pages whose content regularly appears on my timeline are Waterford Whispers and IFL Science, both of whom I have seen repeat posts verbatim months down the line.

Its worth investigating others to see how their posting works for them.

Sheila76

I may be a little bit late replying to this thread but i am actually in Digital Marketing and specialise in social media. Social Media (Facebook) can be used for any business and is most definitely extremely helpful!

What i o is optimise the page so that it is hitting your target market. Without optimising your Facebook page it is like firing blank bullets. A lot of people don't know about SEO for social media and when utilised can mean that you won't need to pay for boosting posts to reach your target market.

This also ensures that your posts are getting pushed into newsfeeds. This is cheating Facebooks Algorithm but works like a treat.

I set up a Facebook page on Sunday night and within 1 night i had a reach of 45,000 people. This was without paying for one ad.