Monday, February 16, 2015

In Response To - About Face: How Facebook Drove Us Away

I recently read a post on LinkedIn titled “About Face: How Facebook Drove Us Away” by Dave Pilcher, the VP of Sales & Marketing at Freeport Press. The following is my response to his article.

Dave, in your article you mentioned that only big organizations are able to delete time sensitive Facebook posts, I found that I am able to delete time sensitive posts manually so I am a little confused as to why you think this would be something limited to big organizations. If you are having trouble remembering when to delete it I suggest using a smart phone or Google calendar to remind yourself when to delete the post. As for the rewards of connecting to an audience that you get for posting on Facebook, I would suggest reusing the same post on multiple social media sites. This would allow the same post to be used on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google plus, and Twitter.

As far as the $2,080 cost, let's compare that to a single newspaper ad or print ad. Given Dave's estimate of 1,200 person audience for $5 per boosted post with Facebook advertising, that works out to total views of 499,200 through Facebook seeing Freeport Press's ads. In comparison a single quarter page ad in the major daily newspaper in the city I live in would cost about the same. The newspaper's readership is roughly forty to fifty thousand. Comparing the audience that works out to a 10-to-1 reach advantage for Facebook over the print newspaper. As far as not everyone being able to see your ad in Facebook, in a newspaper not everyone is guaranteed to see that ad. Also one has to account for the bonus that these Facebook ads are being sent to people who are already familiar with the Freeport Press company. They had to be in order to agree to like the Facebook page. In comparison the untargeted newspaper ad is being viewed by anyone who bought a newspaper. The newspaper readers are much less likely aware or interested in any of the writers that Freeport Press is working with. Another advantage is that the Facebook ads can easily be increased or decreased. The quarter page newspaper ad comes in one giant lump of customers. Any small firm might be overwhelmed by the sudden influx of customers from such a newspaper ad. Facebook on the other hand would have spread that ad buy over the whole month, allowing for a much easier approach to handle continual customer attraction that wouldn't require extra staff and equipment to deal with the surge of customers on one day.

If it was up to me I would have just reduced the amount of posts you post on Facebook from fourteen down to two or three per week and reuse that material in other social media platforms. Also I think it was a waste to delete the Facebook account for Freeport Press after all the money it spent on getting it to that point. All you have to show for that money spent on Facebook is just a deleted page and a blog post on LinkedIn saying that you deleted your account. There likely was some paid labour or advertising costs spent on building the list. The value created by that ad spend is deleted, just like the Freeport Press Facebook page.

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