Why Social Media Marketing Matters as Facebook Opens Pages
Facebook opened its doors to businesses in 2007 and Twitter was still finding its footing in 2008. Here is the business case for paying attention now.
Most executives evaluating social media in 2008 are asking the wrong question. They want to know whether it will replace their website or their email list. It will not, and that is not the point. The point is that a growing share of your customers now spend meaningful time on Facebook, MySpace and increasingly Twitter, and every hour they spend there is an hour your marketing has no presence unless you build one.
The reach argument is no longer speculative
Facebook opened registration beyond college students in September 2006 and, more importantly for businesses, launched Facebook Pages in November 2007, giving companies a free, official way to build a presence and communicate with fans directly. MySpace had already proven the commercial case years earlier, particularly for music, entertainment and local businesses that used profiles to build word-of-mouth relationships with customers who opted in.
This matters to the bottom line for a specific reason: acquisition cost. Traditional advertising charges you for every impression regardless of whether the audience cares. A Facebook Page or a MySpace profile, once built, delivers updates to an audience that already chose to connect with you, at no incremental media cost. That is a fundamentally different economic model than buying banner ads or newspaper space, and it rewards businesses that get in early and build an audience before their competitors do.
Where the actual revenue shows up
The clearest wins so far have come from three places. Retailers and local businesses use Facebook Pages and MySpace profiles to announce promotions, new inventory and events directly to an audience that has already self-selected as interested, which converts noticeably better than cold outreach. Brands with a strong visual or lifestyle identity, restaurants, boutiques, entertainment venues, use these platforms to build the kind of recognition that used to require sustained print or broadcast spending. And customer service has quietly become a channel: complaints and questions posted publicly on a Page get resolved faster because a public thread is more urgent to a business than a private email, and other customers see the resolution.
Twitter, still under two years old and growing but not yet mainstream, is worth watching rather than betting the budget on. Early-adopter brands are experimenting with it for real-time updates and customer conversation, but its business case is still being written.
What this costs to do right
The honest cost is time, not money. Facebook Pages and MySpace profiles are free to create. What they require is a person willing to post consistently, answer messages and comments and treat the presence as an ongoing relationship rather than a one-time setup task. Businesses that create a Page and abandon it get little value; businesses that treat it as a standing communication channel, the way they treat their phone line or their storefront, see it compound.
The businesses that will regret this period are not the ones who tried social media and it did not work. They are the ones who waited until 2010 or later to claim a presence, by which point their competitors had already built the audience and the habit. Getting a Page live, posting real updates and listening to what customers say back costs almost nothing and starts paying immediately in a way that is hard to measure with the reporting tools available today but easy to notice in customer conversations.
