Can you imagine anything more annoying than a giant mouse dancing to “Happy Birthday” while a bunch of eight-year-olds run around trying to fill a bucket with tickets so they can “buy” a plastic snake toy?
Me neither.
Chuck E. Cheese was officially off the list of possibilities for my son’s birthday party. Sorry kiddo, parental sanity absolutely must be a factor here. Moving on…
So, when searching for alternatives, I did the expected – I typed “Birthday party locations in Pittsburgh” into Google. Many obvious choices came up, but after skimming through a few pages, I came across a skating rink. Like a real roller skating rink! Click, click and I was on my way to their website – a very stale, outdated, non-mobile-friendly site. Bummer.
But, wait – how about Facebook? I typed in their name and voila! A nice, updated Facebook business page with recent posts, pictures, videos and reviews. Awesome! I called to speak to the owner and shortly thereafter booked a party for later in the month.
As I talked to people about my son’s upcoming party, not one single person knew of this hip location I “found.” How could that be? It’s been there since 1948? It’s a modern dilemma faced by far too many businesses today – how do you market your business to the right audience and get them to buy your services or product?
Website vs. Facebook
There is some debate about which is better – a website or a Facebook page. Imagine a handful of years ago when this was hardly even a question. Businesses spent thousands of dollars to build flashy, brochure-ware websites with the overriding belief that “if you build it, they will come.” Well, not really…
In today’s world, you have to consider where the people are, what they are looking for and how they access and share information. If you look at numbers, Facebook has 1.7 billion active users. That’s “illion” with a “B.” Wow.
Over the past few years, Facebook has been enhancing and modifying its Business Pages with the goal of encouraging companies to set up a page and ultimately to purchase advertising. Of course, they also did that little thing to their algorithm to make sure few people would see said page without putting money behind it. Their strategy seems to be working though. With 60 million active small business pages and a 33 percent increase in the number of businesses using their paid social program, Facebook is changing how many companies allocate their advertising budget.
For some companies, especially small businesses, it makes sense to put more focus on a Facebook page. Here’s why:
- Adding or changing content is very easy on Facebook. If you manage a personal social page, you can manage a business page. It doesn’t require special training, tools or platforms. It’s not uncommon to leave outdated information up on a website because it’s simply too cumbersome to remove it. Either staff isn’t trained on the software platform or you have to outsource it to the company who built your website. Not very convenient…
- Visual content. Same as above, it’s simple to upload photos, videos and images to a Facebook business page directly from a mobile device. Plus, visual content is consumed much faster than written content. And, according to social media expert, Erik Qualman of Socialnomics, video will account for 2/3 of mobile usage in 2018. And, right now, mobile drives more than 50 percent of e-commerce traffic.
- It can be cumbersome to interact with a company on a website. Sure, you can fill out a contact page or submit a comment, but timely interaction most commonly occurs on social media channels. It’s where conversations happen in real time and often where people look to see the latest information about a company.
- Peer Recommendations. When people you know who are similar to you like or interact with a page, you’ll often see that in your newsfeed – especially when they mark they are interested in or planning to attend an event. This is useful because human psychology suggests people tend to like to do the same things their peers do. This is also why we ask our trusted friends and family for advice and we typically do so via public forums like Facebook. In fact, Socialnomics research says that 90 percent of people trust peer recommendations. By having a Facebook presence, you are making it easier for people to share, review and recommend your business.
In general, we suggest companies have a good balance of social media and website presence, however in today’s fast-paced, socially-connected world, it would be a mistake to ignore the power of Facebook when considering the best ways to reach potential customers.
So what do you prefer when searching for a company or service? Do you use Google or do you go straight to social channels, like Facebook? Tell us in the comments below.
Hollie Geitner is vice president, client services at WordWrite Communications. She can be reached at hollie.geitner@wordwritepr.com.
