It's about branding. Huge corporations rely on branding. You see their logo, their product, their message it is imprinted in your brain. They more they show you their branding the more you remember it. When you think cheese burger what do you think of? McDonalds, burger king? The golden arches?
Can't argue with this. Branding is important but is most effective when done on a mass scale. On FB, mass scale = mass likes, which leads us back to the question of how to get mass likes.
It is also a great vehicle to deliver advertisements, coupons and discounts they cant get anywhere else. There are people who will visit their respected pages to receive discounts. The economy is tough and people will look for discounts where ever they can.
Or they can look at the countless ads that clutter their mailboxes or even the Sunday paper. And while they are navigating to a business' fan page to look at all those juicy ads, they might get sidetracked by the face of some attractive person whose page they decide to visit. Maybe they will come back to that business' fan page, but maybe not.
Another great thing about facebook is that it makes a business for personal. When a business is liked or connected with its almost like a person inviting you into their personal space. You can be more in tune with your customers and find out what products or services they would really like or how they feel about your company.
Yeah, personal. Reminds of when I was forced to like the fan page of Cricket Cellular before I could lodge my complaint. By the time I waded through all the clutter, I let 'em have it with ALL CAPS. I surely let them know how I felt about their company.
Another thing is its free and offers a way to deliver content on demand to a user base of over 500 million. I'm still convinced 10 Million of those users are accounts we have made here at BHW.
What content? their ads? If content = interaction then the FB user will have to wait until the next update for interaction, which in many cases will be days if not weeks.
As for the much pimped 500 million user base, many salivating business owners have to make do with a diet of less than 100, as in the real example of the bar owner above.
Its all about how you market. Do you stand on a desert road with a sign that says lemonade 5cents or do you go to the world hottest chili cook off contest and slap your stand up in front of people dieing for a drink? You go where the crowd is.
This is very true. You do go where the crowd is, but you also have to be careful that you aren't lynched, trampled to death, or starved in paradise.
As for fan pages being a free platform, yes, but you also have to factor in the cost of the discounts advertised, which must continue unabated if the business wants a steady stream of likes;
and the page must be continually attended to if you don't want it to morph into a complaint section. That costs time and money, and I am perfectly willing to undertake the task for any interested businesses for monthly recurring fee.
Unless a business can really go viral with its likes, well-executed marketing campaigns and ROI analyses are a must in order to continue to use FB intelligently.
The problem with FB is that it is like a psychiatric patient with multiple personality disorder that the doctor hasn't quite figured out yet. No doubt it will provide a lucrative platform for all businesses once a saddle is made that doesn't slip, and we can break the beast in properly. Until then, it'll be hit and miss IMO
