Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Is there value in a presence on them?
-
I have a client (professional practice) whose father is a marketing professor. He is pushing the client that he should have a professional page on social sites. While I believe having FB likes, shares, Tweet links, +1, etc. on the page, I really am ambivalent about building pages specifically for social media sites.
For some of you who have tracked the efficacy of these it would be great to know your pros and cons. -
Hi Robert
Apologies for the late reply. beena crazy few days here in South Africa
well lets put this into context. Having a Facebook presence and advertising on facebook using a PPC or CPM campaign are two different entities.
I agree, from my experience, advertising a product for lead generation on Facebook for instance has been a waste of time and doesd not convert well at all to sales.
I feel generally facebook users are there to have fun and pass the time rather than look for great deals and buy things.
However, Facebook and using Facebook advertsfor branding and general brand awereness is pretty powerfull.
Imagine the ripple effect of having 1000 users, who view your status and actually like it or comment or view it a few times. This gets fed into on to their wall and is seen by another 100 friends. So potentially you can reach 100 000 people with minimum effort. Once again, you arent selling anything but you are building your brand awerness. Zero cost, all to gain.
All networks have their pro's and con's. You need to find what is important for the long term benift of your client and then strategise from their. perform your own tettst and start compiling data for that particular client on social media platforms.
I hope that this helps youa little more
-
Thanks Kyle,
We utilize social bookmarking on almost every client site we have and you are correct. My interest is much more based on just not seeing the efficacy in building site type pages for clients on social media. I want them to spend their money where they get a bang for the buck so that is the reason for the questions.thanks again.
-
Stefano,
Again thanks for the responses, but..... The "social media is a must" and pro's outweigh the con's statements don't really provide depth. Is there anything in your experience that says: this is where it makes a difference. Something more tangible? I know all the arguments around everyone is there, its how people communicate, building buzz, etc. What i am after is more numbers, etc. - Bob's Tire House started an FB page and with no other advertising built a viral community and sold a thousand tires (yes it is an exaggeration, but purely for illustration of what I am looking for).
Or, an FB page when implemented as such will provide X or Y to your business. Just understand I am looking for a prove up on X or Y. Not being a pain on purpose, just bugged by this question.
-
I think this really is helpful. It would appear, that in order to make it work, there must also be someone who is monitoring it to insure a client is responded to? I would wonder about a time/value problem here.
With our clients, some do and some do not have say a FB page. (For all professional practices we encourage them being on LinkedIn). How do you judge the cost vs. benefit of monitoring this? -
Thanks for the response,
While I understand it is a "must," my question is, "why is it a must?" Just because people are on facebook, etc? I am wondering if there is any data around what verticals are able to quantify anything from same?
The biggest thing I have seen from (FB for example) is that when doing contextual ads on it the leads generated were purely worthless. I can see where a Groupon type ad, etc. would work, but am really ambivalent to spending a client's $ (even though I am making money by doing same) when I cannot see a real return. Even with throwing out the direct response or ROI piece, I do not see where a physician, attorney, manufacturing company, etc benefits from having a specific FB page.Thoughts
-
I agree social media is a most... depending on the niche. My normal suggestion for people trying to ease into social media is to use social bookmarking (add this, share this, etc). With social bookmarking you can see what channels your users prefer and based on your analytics you can make educated steps with your social media plan.
-
Mobile apps are a must if you are doing this, I agree.
-
Yes, i totally agree with you. You have to be pro-active but the pro's outweigh the cons.
look for tools like tweet deck to manage multiple accounts or mobile apps for notifications and to interact on the spot.
-
The biggest con for me is the anticipated response time on questions. When people ask a question on a Social Media site they expect an answer in less than 15 minutes. Sometimes I happen to be sitting at my computer, and that's no problem. However, most questions happen early in the morning, and late at night (auto industry). Because of that, I'm typically not conscious or coherent enough to answer questions about towing capacity, cubic feet of space, etc.
However, I've been able to connect with some people on a personal level, and have been able to get them to come in for service and repairs.
Bottom line, it can improve your bottom line, but the chance to lose a customer is there, as well.
-
Hi Robert
In this day and age, have a social media presence is an absolute must. Yes, social media can take a lot of work to get up and running but allows a great platform to interact with the public, not only potential clients.
Dont try and sell services, but rather sell your mission statement
As for Linkedin...its a must for any professional looking to network. The reason being is that people on Linkedin are specifically looking to do business and make business connevtions.
The key is to be trans[parent, give as much information as possible and have fun while doing it.
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Better converting facebook
Where can I help get my business marketing bounce rate from 95% Down?
Social Media | | SEOgrandmaster0 -
Facebook targeting on Organic
Hi I am fully aware of how to do facebook paid advertising but I follow a page called: https://www.facebook.com/GiveMeSport/ They know that I am a Liverpool fan (might a filled out a survey once or some other way, but they know I support the greatest football team on the planet) however they only ever show me Liverpool articles in my feed and they are organic. They post a lot more but i never see any of it. Does anyone know how they are able to do this as I would love to segment people on my site and target them accordingly. Thanks in Advance Andy
Social Media | | Andy-Halliday1 -
Twitter - How to use for lead generation?
Buongiornoo from the digital glactic epicentre that is Wetherby, Yorkshires answer to Silicon valley...
Social Media | | Nightwing
At the weekend a new restaurant in my home town cleverly promoted its self on my Twitter account... heres a screen shot of the the actual message http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/twitter-feed-2_zpsdb658938.jpg My questios is, "How did they do this?" With the caveat of they didnt manually search for people in the city of York. Could it be twitter advertising as explained here:
https://ads.twitter.com/accounts/18ce53uonc3/welcome Any insights welcome 🙂 Grazie tanto,
David0 -
Twitter, Please direct me to background image guide
Hi guys, I'm having trouble coming up with a proper twitter background. I'm just going to start with a simple solid green with branding info in the top left. Do you guys know of an article that gives me the exact dimensions and placement to put things as far as where to put my logo and name in the background image and how wide and tall to make my logo and name. Or you can just tell me, but an article would be fine. The articles I've read are not consistent. Thank you!
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
How to Search Twitter Bios for URLs?
Hi Mozzers, Quick question, Does anyone know of a tool that can search Twitter bios for a URL then match the URL to the asscoiated twitter handle? For example, my twitter handle is @rosstav and the URL in my bio is rosstavendale(dot)com. I want a tool that searches bios for a list of URLs and returns the twitter handle. I tried Followerwonk but no joy. Any thoughts?
Social Media | | rtavs0 -
Cant post/share to Facebook page anymore...please help
Hi Guys I manage a few facebook pages and a day ago something weird happened to one and i cannot figure it out. It started with me trying to auto share a youtube video to the facebook page and offcourse added the "comment" and shared. The video is then visible when i log in to the page but not when i am not...and it also does not share to the followers....and then the same happened with a normal link and image post....I see it when logged in but it does not get sent to my followers or to the page if not logged in....am i missing something here. Should i just log in and then click on share and see if that send it out?? please help...facebook drives me crazy half the time..thanks in advance
Social Media | | nomad-2023230 -
LinkedIn and SEO -- Is there a relationship?
I've analyzed the link profiles for 12 sites recently. I noticed that none included a link from LinkedIn, though each company had links on LinkedIn (I suspect this is because LinkedIn redirects outbound links). Are links on LinkedIn really good for SEO? (IE DO THEY PASS LINK JUICE !!!!!!!????) SuperStock_1491R-1130365.jpg linkedin.jpg linkedin-243x300.jpg
Social Media | | glennfriesen0 -
Is there any online tool you can suggest for monitoring facebook activities such as shares - likes etc
I just wonder if there is any online monitoring tool - application for Facebook activities..
Social Media | | merkal20050