12 Jul No, Your Company Does Not Need a Facebook Page
In our overly-articulated, overly-shared personal lives, it’s easy to wonder how much of the social media world should really transfer over to our businesses.
While many businesses are early adopters of the latest and greatest social media platforms, there are many left on the sidelines wondering: “What can these platforms do for my company?” and “Are they worth the time?”
If this is you, you are definitely not alone – many of our business-to-business clients ask us about social media and the role it should play in marketing their business.
While social media can certainly be beneficial for a growing business, the platforms that a company uses must correlate directly to the goals they set out to achieve.
Simply put, you have to be strategic about which social media channels your company uses.
For example, many business-to-business service companies just do not need Facebook.
LinkedIn, yes.
Twitter, sure.
But Facebook? Nope.
Why? Because the way that users interact with Facebook is not conducive to the needs of many business-to-business service providers.
Using Facebook to promote your law practice is much the same as standing up at a business conference and discussing which make-up looks best on dry skin. While some of the audience may care about such things, they are not in the right frame of mind to hear it at that time.
Putting your message on the wrong communications channel not only leaves your audience cold, it actually makes you look unprofessional.
Think about the last time you used your Facebook account (assuming you have one).
Did you look up an accounting firm’s page to get more information about their services?
What about a lawyer to handle your firm’s next big acquisition?
You didn’t.
You looked at your friends’ posts about their babies, cats and the dinner they had last night. You checked out the page for the restaurant you’ve been dying to try to see if they had a happy hour.
The fact is, restaurants and consumer companies can conduct strong, results-oriented marketing using Facebook, including promoting their latest products, advertising sales, happy hours and new menu items.
But for companies seeking business prospects for their more serious services, Facebook is not the best use of a marketer’s time (or said company’s budget).
Here’s the bottom line – social media can be a fantastic marketing tool, but it’s definitely not one size fits all. Businesses must be cognizant of their targets and focus their marketing efforts on mediums that will reach their customers in a credible way in order to drive results.