One of the things that I am always thinking about for my clients is how to use social media to grow their business. One of the easiest and most obvious ways to engage with customers is through Facebook. A study by The e-tailing Group showed that 91% of the retailers they surveyed are using or plan on using a Facebook page for their business. While that is a large number, I wonder what percentage of those retailers are actually using it successfully.
How many times have you been asked to ‘Like’ a page and then you either get hit with status updates with links to their site every day or you never see anything from them again? All this is going to make me do is hide your future posts or forget that you exist. It’s all about timing and engagement. I don’t mind an update once a day if the content is engaging and/or informative. Ask me a question. Let me know there is a special that day. There has to be a reason I’m going to look at your page, otherwise I’m going to block you and forget that you are there.
Facebook has done a great job developing materials for businesses to use to get started and develop a strategy. They have created a Best Practice Guide for Marketing on Facebook that gives you advice on how to develop and execute your social strategy. Here are their Five Guiding Principles:
- Build a strategy that is social by design
- Create an authentic brand voice
- Make it interactive
- Nurture your relationships
- Keep learning
While Mark Zuckerberg and his team continue to provide these resources to businesses, they are also working on new ways to generate revenue. This year, Facebook introduced a new type of paid advertising called Sponsored Stories.
When I learned about what exactly they involved, I thought it was a brilliant idea. Here is what a Sponsored Story is:
- Someone likes a business/page, checks into a location or uses an application and shares that information.
- Like always, this content is posted on their wall and will appear in their friends’ news feeds.
- If one of these businesses or locations has purchased Sponsored Stories, that person’s like or check-in will appear in the right side bar on their friends’ pages only.
Example of a Sponsored Story Ad
When I started doing a little more research to see if it would make sense for our clients, I found that there were a number of people who didn’t agree with me that this was a great idea. Mostly because they feel like they are being used as an advertisement and not being compensated for it.
Here is my opinion on the situation. Facebook is a free service to anyone and I believe they have the right to generate revenue so long as they aren’t risking our privacy. And yes, I know they have had issues with this in the past, but as far as these ads are concerned, they are taking content that you have already created and calling it out on the sidebar, where only your friends can see it. If you feel like you are being ‘used’ delete your account, don’t check-in to locations or share content from apps. Do you feel like Facebook should compensate you when they use your content for advertisements?
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