Is Facebook still viable for business?

The big question on every business owners lips right now

Is Facebook still worth posting my business content, with the number of people seeing my post going down more each month?

Many of us in the industry are finding that just plain old ‘Boost post’ is not as effective as it first was, and we are now finding posting the post as an advert is ten times more likely to glean engagements, also you can have a couple of calls to action and a separate link too.

Mr. Z  had two things to say about Facebook timeline edge rank, firstly, when you cut out the diplomacy, he’s like; Man it’s a free website, posting your company bumph is free, let’s not forget that eh!!!

Secondly he went around the houses to say Facebook has grown so big and your average person has around 300 friends and their wall will have around 1,500 items of news deemed by the system to show on their timeline each day, which has grown exponentially since 2 years ago, and this will be one of the main reasons why fan pages are getting less and less people to see a post from a business page.

Quote Mr. Z:

“So there’s this inherent conflict in the system though, which is are we trying to optimize News Feed to give each person – all of you guys the best experience when you’re reading or are we trying to help businesses just reach as many people as possible? And in every decision that we make, we optimize for the first. We’re making it so that for the people who we serve, who use Facebook, and are reading News Feed get the very best experience that they can. And that means that if a business is sharing content that’s going to be useful for them, then we’ll show that”

Facebook still does, regardless of most people perception of the site as a branding tool, still send a lot of referrals back to websites:

Facebook sharing

So how do you get your post from your business page to give the best experience you can? First off; you must remember the golden rule of the internet which is brand rapport, you have to get trust from the offset. We live in an age where people are buying more and more than ever before but we hate being sold to!  Companies are however falling still foul of posting too many direct calls to action and having their Facebook pages deleted, or just having the post denied any exposure. This is what any of the mainstay websites deem as being ‘sold to!’

Try to imagine your online presence as a very smart female partner, now the smart lady will need something, a material thing, product or service, and it’s her ability to make the Caveman believe it was his idea, guys that was never going to be the case, let’s face facts, it was never your initial idea to buy the station wagon! The lady uses cunning and guile to create an environment where you want to buy, and she just leads you down the consultative path, woman have made the best sales people since time began, and your blog post should do the same!

This is what I have been educating business on for 5 years now; that search engines and social media will always give preference to information based posts.

Instead of selling cakes, sell the recipe, and interesting novel ideas to create the hunger and get the person to stay long enough to know you know a lot about what you are baking! Then they may just stick around and see what else is in the oven.

Stop selling! Many years ago when I was a salesman, we did a lot of road shows for our office equipment company, and I did rather well from expos, so at the next sales meeting I was asked what it was I did to create good returns from the exhibition stands. All I said was instead of getting straight down to the nitty-gritty of the machinery, I asked the person had they traveled far to get to the expo, and what had made them come, this seemed to surprise the guest as I don’t think they had been asked that before they had got to my stand.

Imagine if you walked into your local department store and instead of the girl following you around telling you what’s on offer, she simply asked you whether you enjoyed the game on Saturday, yep that would shock you right!

It’s only going back to Dale Carnegie’s age old undeniable science of persuasion, and one of his first rules was; show genuine interest in people and they will show genuine interest in you. The best sales people I ever met were very personable people who had time for anyone they met.

I go on a lot about Sales, because, almost everyone I met sells something online, and the difference between online selling and offline selling is negligible, you need to be trusted first and then people will buy from you, this is why I mentor all my people to start blogging about their business through their passion and personality, and to stop selling directly and build up a following of people who see you as an expert and the next logical step is to show them how to take home whatever it is you have educated them about!

To learn how to create an environment that simply walks people through your process and creates real customers through social media and search engines which increases your brand value and bottom line, then contact Netmedia!