I didn’t plan on writing this article when I walked into the office this morning. But when I logged into to our PlumberSEO Facebook page I had a long list of messages from people I don’t know, which is fine because I like interacting with people on Facebook. Two of these contacts were different, they were solicitations. One was a guy trying to sell me Facebook likes (really?), another was a women trying to sell me her printing services.
I had to laugh of these archaic marketing tactics, these people have never interacted with me in the past. I never heard of their companies, I never liked their companies on Facebook. A quick visit to their Facebook pages revealed that all they do is push their old school advertising. Notice I used the cheap word advertising and not marketing. That’s because they are not marketing, they are pushing their advertising.
That’s just not the way to use Facebook, social media marketing is not a push advertising platform. People use Facebook to interact with friends and family. From a business perspective it’s a place to share information that people find valuable. It’s also a place to interact with others. It’s hard to measure ROI in this space, but it’s a great place to enhance your brand, share your info and reach out to potential customers. It becomes a powerful tool when they start sharing your info with their friends and family making it the virtual word of mouth marketing.
Now keep in mind there are ways to market using the Facebook platform. You can run ads in the timeline, but the beauty here is you have the ability to hyper-target who you want to reach. Maybe by demographic or even people talking about plumbing issues. Facebook is a powerful marketing tool but you have to learn to use it correctly. Please don’t just send out a virtual cold call and expect the flood gates to open.
