2013-10-03

Facebook is indisputably the most famous social media existing today. This is followed by sites like Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube. So far, the use of the combination of these social media pages can increase the success of social media marketing. However, if you are contemplating using social media marketing for business, many experts suggest that you start with the use of Facebook. Listed below are the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook for marketing.



The Advantages

Facebook is free

Setting up an account in Facebook is absolutely free. Business entities are enjoying free online exposure with the use of Facebook. Anyone can just set up an account and will not be charged a single cent. This can be a godsend if you want to market your products or services but have a limited fund to do so.

You can display multimedia tools

Marketing can be more convincing if you use multimedia tools like pictures and videos. With Facebook, you are given the freedom to use these to promote your products and services. “How to” videos will educate your audience on how to use a particular product. Pictures on the other hand will stimulate their visual senses. Articles will not suffice since letters are not enough to get your audience to view your page. People will usually respond better to multimedia material that they can see or hear.

Cheap advertising

Instead of advertising through search engines, you can advertise within the Facebook community. The rates are far cheaper than the ones offered by popular search engines. These advertisements will usually appear on the pages of the accounts of users.  You can incorporate the use of pictures with these types of advertisements for added attraction. You can opt to have these directed back to your website or your own Facebook account if you want to gain more likes in your page.

Establish customer contact

Facebook can now be used to interact with your audience. Anyone can just post on your wall for comments. When they do this, you can start a conversation with them to gain knowledge regarding their satisfaction rate with regard to your products or services. This will give you a way to survey your market so that you know the areas that needs improvement in your business.

The Disadvantages

Requires time

Unlike traditional advertising, Facebook marketing could take a while before you reap results. You will need to build your number of followers and this requires effort on your part. You may have to post hundreds of information before you can get noticed by the community. Aside from links pointing back to your website, you will also need to post newsworthy information coming from the World Wide Web to prevent your page from looking like a hard core seller.

Can gain you bad reputation

Since everyone can just freely post on your wall, one bad review can easily become viral. While you can have a comment removed from your page, this will only make you look suspicious. Since bad reviews are already part of being in the industry of business, this is something that you can never fully control. You must have someone overlooking the comments so that damages are kept to a minimum.

Risks on privacy

Although you can have some control regarding the amount of information you share on your Facebook, some business entities have already made the mistake of sharing a little bit too much. One mistake will give your competition an edge over your business. When your business is partaking on a product development, wait for the right time before announcing the product’s existence on your Facebook page.

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