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
-
LinkedIn switching links in messages to httpS?
One of my clients has been using the "Send a message" function in LinkedIn to reach out to folks with whom he's connected, and it seems that recently (though it could have always been this way), LinkedIn is changing the URL from http:// to https:// when he provides a link to his website. His site isn't secure, since it's not ecommerce and doesn't collect PII, and though I know that Google "likes" sites that are https, it doesn't seem like it's worth the investment. I did test this, and found the same "switcheroo" happening to me. Anyone know if this is a new LinkedIn thing, and if there's a workaround? Thanks for reading!
Social Media | | measurableROI1 -
What do you do when your Facebook page is Unpublished?
The page in question has been there for about 5 years and has about 80 followers. It is for a business that sells steel plate (B2B) and everything is totally compliant with Facebook T&C as far as I can tell. It's been unpublished with the statement "Your Page has been unpublished and it cannot be published again." We did an appeal about 6 weeks ago and heard absolutely nothing.... Generally we got no likes, no comments and reached about 20 people with each post. So I am lost as to why we were banned and lost as to what we do next It's fine if they want to unpublish - it's their site - what's frustrating is the arbitrariness, the lack of information as to why it was banned and lack of communication. It's fine if it's a spam site (except if you are a spammer) but I'm selling boring steel plates..... pwqkaz1xzkx7myx2ncwn
Social Media | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
How to designate facebook share image?
Is there a bit of code or someway I can tell facebook, this is the image that should be used as default when this blog post or page is shared? Thank you!
Social Media | | tylerfraser1 -
Content Marketing and Twitter
Hello, I'd like to improve how I use twitter for pushing a piece of content. Here's what I am planning to do currently: First, we created a useful piece of content for a niche where we'll be appealing to the humanitarian side of thing. Nothing like this piece of content is on the web. The subject is not mouthwateringly attractive to other websites, but it is good, very useful, authoritative and uses the information we have in our niche. For Twitter, we plan to pick a website carefully that could use our content and 1. of course follow that site on twitter 2. Retweet 2 or 3 relevant good tweets the site has put out. If the person I want to contact has a twitter account, retweet some of his too. 3. Tweet a general tweet about a good article or blog post the site has with a link to the site and the article. 4. Tweet at a specific person in the site's company (or to the general twitter account if there isn't anyone specific) asking if they need help with content if it is well written and useful, then later tweeting introducing our article. Email will also be used. I'm really new to using twitter for content marketing, any help is appreciated. Facebook liking/sharing as well as blog comment posting along with adding to g plus circles will also be used. Thanks.
Social Media | | BobGW1 -
Facebook like box error
Hello, Using the following code to display a facebook like box http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-NLP-Coaching-Institute-of-California/187804434598142" data-width="198" data-height="320" data-show-faces="true" data-stream="false" data-header="true"> Getting "log in to see this content" when we're not logged in. Our Age setting is set to 13+ example image attached Thanksfacebook-error.gif
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
Best Joomla Facebook LIke Box Plugin
Hello, We want a like box that shows up like the one attached. We've tried several plugins for Joomla 1.6 and none show up consistently in all browsers. Which one do you recommend? like-box-for-seomoz-question.gif
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
Do facebook shares of deep links help the whole domain rank better?
What i mean by this is if we were to obtain 10-20 facebook shares for 10 different deep links like these: http://domain.com/deep-page/page-one
Social Media | | adriandg
http://domain.com/deep-page/page-two
http://domain.com/deep-page/page-three
http://domain.com/deep-page/page-four
... Would that help any of these rank better:
http://domain.com
http://domain.com/product1
http://domain.com/product2
etc... Extrapolating, does the same count for Twitter, Google+, etc?0 -
What variables could be used to calculate the value of a Twitter follower?
Hi Mozzers, What variables could be used to calculate the value of a Twitter follower? I m thinking something of Click through rate Conversion rate Retweets Number of followers Something else?
Social Media | | ThomasHgenhaven0