So I have been doing a fair amount of Facebook for Business bashing lately. It isn’t really that I don’t like Facebook, I just don’t think that marketers get the leverage and lift from Facebook as they do with other marketing venues and mediums. Yet clients and marketers alike flock to facebook first as the holy grail of Social Media and are intoxicated on the matter overall. Folks are pretty passionate about Facebook Marketing as evidenced by the (346) Tweets, (116) Facebook Shares and (86) Comments we got for our post titled Facebook for Business is Overrated.
We came to the Facebook for Business is Overrated conclusion based upon our own experiences and experiments with Facebook Marketing, Facebook Campaigns, Facebook Contests and Facebook Sweepstakes and the experiments we have done regarding same. It just seemed like the amount of work, effort (cost) and resourcores we poured into Facebook, we should have has a better result.
What Are You Measuring
We are measuring our efforts against a number of metrics, including, but not only, “Fans”, “Likes” and “Engagement” Like it or not, most clients measure you with the first two, much more than the later, “Engagement” Of course marketers spend a ton of time attempting to convince everyone why engagement is so important, and it is, however garnishing a larger crowd, aka “Fans” or “Likes” is really the desired result of the person writing the check for your services.
Are You Looking At The Right Numbers
Jay Bear penned a great post last week titled 6 Critically Undervalued Social Media Metrics, pointing out again the importance of looking at the right numbers,
Instead of just counting the number of Facebook “likes” you accrue – which signifies nothing more than digital bumper stickering, instead track how often your fans click “like” and comment upon the status updates you post.
The more fans that click “like” and comment, the more likely your future updates are to be seen in their News Feed, dramatically increasing your actual Facebook audience.
If you’re an administrator of a Facebook fan page, you can find the Daily Story Feedback chart at http://facebook.com/insights (look in the interactions category)
Matthew Hendrick penned a post today, The #1 Way to Market Apartments on Facebook, claiming that most folks are wrongly marketing on Facebook using “push” methods as opposed to “pull” methods to get folks into the sales funnel.
In all likelihood, every other channel you market to relies on a traditional “push” strategy. If you turn off the faucet, the water (or leads) run dry. The reason why many people look at Facebook and see nothing but a heavy time commitment with no measurable ROI is because they expect it to act like any other traditional push tool. It won’t! Can we accept that Facebook may be best used as a means to pull new residents in, simply because they can’t deny the attraction to your vibrant community? In the same way that millions of individuals use Facebook to showcase their best self to the world and draw others into their orbit, so should your community.
While I would agree with Matt in principle, perhaps a different question is How Much Effort Do We Put Into Facebook Marketing For Given Result. We manage (25) plus Facebook Fan Pages for our clients. Clearly, by far and away, the pages where we put in the most effort have the highest result. The question becomes, at what cost does it make sense.
Our Lab Results:
- Property Management Co A, (Minimal Effort) Our effort has been minimal, 2-3 posts per day to achieve the result listed. Note that 2-3 Facebook posts per day may seem excessive to some
- (387) Fans
- (10,912) post views in the last thirty days
- (9) interactions in the last thirty days
- Urbane Life, (Moderate Effort) We have put in moderate effort to achieve the result listed, lots of interaction, contests and small give away’s
- (2,310) Fans
- (87,940) post views in the last thirty days
- (119) interactions in the last thirty days
- Retail Client A: (Significant Effort) We have by far and away spent the most recourses on this account, Lost of posts, contests, sweepstakes and significant give away’s
- (1,862) Fans
- (73,604) post views the last thirty days
- (764) interactions in the last thirty days
So, The question is, of these three case studies which have varying degrees of effort, and therefore cost, what is the value of their result, of which none really track to sales or rentals. So in two cases we are having lots of conversation, which I would agree has some value, but at what cost?
Eric’s background is rooted in the rental and real estate industries. He founded metro Detroit’s Urbane Apartments in 2003, after serving as senior vice president for a major Midwest apartment developer. He established a proven track record of effectively repositioning existing rental properties in a way that added value for investors while enhancing the resident experience. He also established The Urbane Way, a social media marketing and PR laboratory, where innovative marketing ideas are tested. Eric has been featured inEntrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine.
Eric Brown
Eric’s background is rooted in the rental and real estate industries. He founded metro Detroit’s Urbane Apartments in 2003, after serving as senior vice president for a major Midwest apartment developer. He established a proven track record of effectively repositioning existing rental properties in a way that added value for investors while enhancing the resident experience. He also established Urbane Media, a social media marketing and PR laboratory, where innovative marketing ideas are tested. Eric has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine. You can connect with Urbane_Media on Twitter. Eric also writes regular articles for the following publications; Multi Housing News Social Media Examiner Search Engine Guide
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Thanks for the kind words and link Eric. Great topic!
[...] Creating all of this “awareness” costs me a lot of time. Eric Urbane brought up some great points in his post from last week. The main thrust of it was this: perhaps a different question is How Much Effort Do [...]
Obviously it makes more contacts if you spend more time working on it. To do it on this level you really do have to hire it out.