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FaceBook Follies

Guest post by: Ben Kemp

Article Overview: From a purely business perspective, FaceBook makes no sense to me at all. Lemmings the world over are signed up by the millions because to exist in business, it seems mission-critical to be on FaceBook! Really? Apparently, the primary user base is still kids, students, families, budding entrepreneurs and befuddled geniuses... Those demographics should sound the "zero ROI" marketing alarm for any intelligently run business. Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500 firms, 60% of whom responded that they believed that FaceBook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security. That's aside from the billions of dollars of lost productivity!

FaceBook Follies

Let me preface this by the comment that at first, I thought FaceBook was "a good thing" and fit for its intended purpose. Its unrivalled ability to connect and unite friends and family seemed like a winner! Like lots of other people, I've got folks I like who are widely dispersed across the planet. FaceBook provided an unprecedented means of connecting us all, at variable levels. But then it grew - man, how it grew! To me, it seems the founders have almost completely lost sight of their primary deliverables, obscuring them with sundry half-baked additional features. Ok, so now its got a Chat function... with a pathetic interface and bereft of the usual features found in MSN Messenger, Skype or Yahoo Chat. Its got a primitive messaging system reminiscent of forums and bulletin boards, but devoid of the robust email system features of Gmail or Hotmail, or any of the other purpose built systems that interface with MS Outlook!

Arrogance on the part of its owners over content ownership and concerns about privacy issues notwithstanding, it sucks in many other respects as well.

Businesses on Face Book

From a purely business perspective, FaceBook makes no sense to me at all. Lemmings the world over are signed up by the millions because to exist in business, it seems mission-critical to be on FaceBook! Really? Did anyone ever take a step back and ask WHY? C'mon, why on earth would you bother? Can anyone actually produce a reputable Case Study that shows how a normal small business has achieved significant ongoing success due to FaceBook? I'd go further - can anyone even show me a set of small business website log files that show significant volumes of traffic from FaceBook as the referring site?

SEO and FaceBook

The leap of faith required to write a positive sentence that includes both "FaceBook" and "SEO" is not dissimilar to that of rubbing a bottle and expecting a Genie to appear... Made a wish, anyone? Having a FaceBook account which links to your main website is about as likely to increase your primary website traffic as a billboard on the moon is. If you are a serious business, frankly there are better uses of your time, money and intellectual expenditure... Yet, people do ask me to SEO their FaceBook pages...

FaceBook & Advertising

Apparently, the primary user base is still kids, students, families, budding entrepreneurs and befuddled geniuses... Those demographics should sound the "zero ROI" marketing alarm for any intelligently run business. FaceBook generally has a one-fifth lower click-through rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major websites across the web. Fewer Facebook's users click on advertisements than users of many other large websites. Google searchers click on the 1st advertisement in search results approx 8% of the time. Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time! Have YOU ever clicked on a FaceBook Advert? I rest my case!

Company Pages on FaceBook

Apparently, there are senior management who obsess over their company's FaceBook page... Good grief, these are probably the same guys who kiss frogs in their quest for a princess! Their directors should relieve them of their duties, or at least cancel their annual Christmas bonus payment! Why? In 2010, Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500 firms, 60% of whom responded that they believed that FaceBook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security. That's aside from the billions of dollars of lost productivity!

A July 2010 survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, FaceBook received a score of 64 out of 100, placing it in the bottom 5% of all private sector companies in terms of customer satisfaction, alongside industries such as the USA's IRS e-file system, airlines, and cable companies. Why did FaceBook score so poorly? Privacy problems, frequent changes to the website's interface, the results returned by the News Feed, and spam.

FaceBook Missionaries

The fervour of new converts to FaceBook frightens me - they become veritable missionaries, intent on converting all to their new faith. Worse, these born-again newbies to the digital world assail the digital superhighway with road trains of garbage. In my opinion, the entire Social Media / Social Bookmarking scenario is a snake-oil salesman's nirvana, and often vaguely reminiscent of those fire and brimstone biblical prophecies which require of you the faith that "If you believe, you will be rewarded in the hereafter!" As an SEO consultant, I'm rather more focused on the "Here and now!"

The End is Nigh

Last week, after another relentless bombardment of; infantile requests to play mindless online games, chat, participate in ridiculous quests and stupid competitions, cancel Friends Requests from people I don't know, the need to open FaceBook to answer emails from people who have not yet figured out how real-world email systems work... I de-activated my personal account! Actually, I would have deleted it but apparently FaceBook OWN my account and I'm not allowed to permanently terminate it. How rude is that?

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Article Tags: business perspective, demographics, facebook, productivity, roi marketing, security threat, SEO



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Re: Is facebook adverts effective? - We have done it for our online live tutoring services. But, I have decided not to use it again because we could know that there were around 250 clicks in a week ,but we could not see capitalise a single student. We targeted UK based 24-30 or something. We actually received a very few (I think around5 out of 250 clicks!) ... They too seem to be Indians and Pakistanis residing in the UK with a full time student visa, which prevents them from taking online lessons from us (then why they clicked our ads and even contacted us mean, I think, they do not going to lose anything!) ... So, I realised that our target market UK based PART TIME ACCA and CIMA students do not use FaceBook to browse ACCA and CIMA related sites although they use FaceBook. So, as our website is for ACCA and CIMA courses, probably it might have been shown in ACCA and CIMA FaceBook groups, where FULL TIME students were browsing it. So, I think it is we, selected the wrong medium .... Not to blame FaceBook I think .... So, it mainly depends on your target market, where they reside and actually from that area/country, truly would your target group see your adverts ? Much to consider ....
Re: Is facebook adverts effective? - Hi Yinka, A company I used to work for did do some advertising with FaceBook. They achieved moderate results. I'm not sure if they use their data to target their advertising, and if they do, I'd imagine it to be quite targeted. In that case, esp. if it's cheaper, FB would be a good choice. Do you have any info on their method? Why not try it for a 3 month window, gauge results and re-evaluate?
Re: Is facebook adverts effective? - [quote="Ringo So":2b1k6zbw]Hi Yinka, A company I used to work for did do some advertising with FaceBook. They achieved moderate results. I'm not sure if they use their data to target their advertising, and if they do, I'd imagine it to be quite targeted. In that case, esp. if it's cheaper, FB would be a good choice. Do you have any info on their method? Why not try it for a 3 month window, gauge results and re-evaluate?[/quote:2b1k6zbw] Hi Ringo, I have checked their methods and pricing and it is far cheaper than google adword, but it is the result I am not sure about. I will take your advice and try it for a month with low budget.
Looking for Business associates in "Online Tutoring" - Hello all, I am from Sri lanka. I have my own online tutoring business, providing one-to-one, online, live and interactive tutoring for the UK's most competitive accountancy exams, ACCA and CIMA. This is the first and only of its kind tutoring services for ACCA and CIMA, which allows students to have two-way voice communication & online collaboration with the tutor, in real-time. The distinct advantage of South-Asia based online tutoring services is, we have highly qualified English speaking tutors and we can provide the same quality tutoring available in the UK "at approximately 1/3rd of the price" charged in the UK. This is NOT because of any sub-standard tutors, but, since the living costs are lower here in South-Asian countries, we could be able to do this. As you may be aware, most of the operations are outsourced these days to low-cost countries, education too is outsourced. So far, we have coached a number of UK & Ireland based students who were previously unsuccessful with other tuition providers. We also have a steady word-of-mouth recommendation by our past and present students. By taking the advantage that, CIMA Sri lanka chapter being the second largest in the world in terms of students, only being next to the UK (CIMA and ACCA, although UK qualifications, are studied in around 150 countries world wide!), we could be able to source high quality tutors for the job, while at a lower price. So far we only had online presence, by advertising in free classified sites such as Craigslist, Gumtree etc and running FaceBook advertisement campaigns. However, based on the current student feedback and their word of mouth recommendations, I would like to have a business partnership with a firm in the West, to expand the operations. Also, I have decided to launch the same style cut-price, one-to-one, online tutoring for the school students which is a larger segment than ACCA and CIMA. Thus, please be kind enough to advice me as to how I could be able to proceed further by having contacts with a potential business partner/associate. Specially, rather than investing, it is very important that the associate has good contacts, for example, to provide Math and Science tutoring to school students mean, we have to have a good relationship with at least 3-5 schools, teachers and of course parents to promote the programme. Online tutoring delivered from South-Asia is growing at a rapid rate (150% p.a) and it is said this is an excellent and sound industry to venture in. For school markets, I would like business associates from anywhere in the world such as the US, the UK & Europe (English speaking countries), Canada, Australia etc. However, for promoting ACCA and CIMA courses, it is better the business associate based in the UK, as most number of students are from the UK. If you have any thing special for the proposal, please feel free to inbox me. Thank you for your understanding and time. Best Regards and Lots Of Luck !


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