{"id":5194,"date":"2012-11-27T08:17:28","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T21:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=5194"},"modified":"2012-11-27T23:02:04","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T12:02:04","slug":"business-life-beyond-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2012\/11\/business-life-beyond-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Is there business life beyond Facebook?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"mix<\/a>

A strong marketing strategy encompasses more than one option<\/p><\/div>\n

Like it or not, Facebook<\/a>\u00a0is a big site that attracts millions of people to it. Every day. Repeatedly.<\/p>\n

As a business, it is important to understand how Facebook could be part of your marketing plan – note I don’t say you have to be ON Facebook but I do think it is a good idea to actively know about it and consciously decide\u00a0whether or nor to use\u00a0it for marketing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Facebook is changing<\/h2>\n

If you’ve been on Facebook or read many marketing\/SEO blogs, you’ll know that Facebook has changed things a number of times.<\/p>\n

Recent changes, however, have made businesses wonder if Facebook will be a viable marketing\u00a0option soon. Updates on business pages do not go into your fans’ news feed by default any more – some do, but\u00a0fans have to show an interest first and it’s still no guarantee.<\/p>\n

Facebook is moving towards charging businesses to be in front of fans.<\/p>\n

As a business, it’s understandable that they want to make money. For SMBs, there is a real and justifiable fear that they won’t be able to compete in the advertising stakes against the big guys. A problem social media supposedly overcame for many SMBs.\"Select<\/a><\/p>\n

At least they have now added notifications so fans can choose to be notified of updates on a page.<\/p>\n

What other options are there?<\/h2>\n

I don’t see this as a small answer. I never thought of Facebook as that important my business relies on it so I already use a number of other avenues.<\/p>\n

But some businesses have put a lot into their Facebook page and could be challenged by looking elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The appeal of Facebook is that so many people use it. But how many of those people are really your target market <\/a>anyway? A targetted option may have fewer users but more of them will be interested so it could offer much more value anyway.<\/p>\n

To me, the risk of Facebook (and similar sites) is lack of ownership. You don’t ‘own’ your Facebook profile in the same way you own your website. Facebook can change the rules or\u00a0 disappear, leaving you without all you built up.<\/p>\n

One way to keep using Facebook but have less reliance on it is to add ‘like’ buttons to your site.<\/p>\n

That means people can still refer to you and your site to their Facebook friends but traffic comes to your site, not your Facebook profile.<\/p>\n

Chris Syme offers a number of good ideas<\/a> in a recent blog post and I’d add a few more:<\/p>\n