Is Facebook Bad for Small Business?

Facebook has changed a lot over the past few years and for small businesses, many would argue it has changed for the worse. I hear business owners complaining time and time again that they can’t grow their organic reach, but I’m here to tell you why you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it.

Organic reach on Facebook is dead – at least for the most part. That may sound harsh, but hear me out. You can have 10,000 "likes" on your Facebook page and not even break 10 "likes" on a photo you post. That’s because Facebook, like many other social media platforms, is saturated. Facebook’s algorithm only shows its users the top 300 posts that they consider to be most relevant to that person. That means you can post all day, every day and never actually appear on the newsfeed of a person who has liked your page, especially if they have more than 300 friends or pages they follow.

Considering the average person has 338 friends and 70 pages they’ve "liked" on Facebook according to Pew Research Center and AdWeek, the odds are not in your favor. You can spend all the time in the world posting quality content to Facebook and it sadly won’t make any difference unless you are investing in paid advertising. However, this doesn’t mean you should give up and stop posting altogether, nor does it mean you should feel pressured to fork over your hard earned cash to Zuckerberg.

Most business owners already know that ROI on social media isn’t great. The goal of promoting your business on social media is more about brand awareness, and less about revenue generation, even though you can’t really have one without the other. While brand awareness can lead to sales, the likelihood of someone purchasing your product or service via Facebook is slim. Regardless, businesses want to look reputable, and in order to bring legitimacy to their brand, they feel they need to invest in increasing the number of “likes” on their page. The truth is most people who stumble across your page aren’t concerned about how many “likes” you have.

What others want to see when they come across your business on Facebook is that you are real and that you’re active. This means you need to have reviews from legitimate customers and you need to be posting content on a regular basis. It is important to post at least once a day to stay relevant. It’s also important to encourage reviews from your customers, which in turn will drive organic traffic to your page. What isn’t important is how many people actually “like” your page. Paying for “likes” isn’t going to increase your revenue. While it’s easy to get caught up in the popularity contest of social media, it is important to remember that business is about making money first and foremost.

This is why Facebook ads aren’t worth it for small brick and mortar companies: Imagine you are shopping around for a service or an event venue. Perhaps you’re having a wedding or throwing a bridal shower. There is a good chance you will turn to Google first and search for “event venues.” You might even take it one step further and search by location and type of venue you’re looking for. This is because when we shop around for a service or a venue, it’s something we research. It takes time. We don’t click on the first event venue we see and say, “I’ll take this one,” and that’s exactly why Facebook advertising is a poor investment for businesses in the service industry.

Do you remember the last ad you saw on Facebook? I would venture to guess that you don’t because we are so experienced at tuning them out. It is unlikely you even think twice about ads on social media because we are conditioned to just keep scrolling, especially if you are a Millennial who has grown up with ads all around you. You’ve probably developed ad immunity. We might see an ad for a pair of shoes and think about purchasing them, but if we don’t buy them in that very moment, it’s unlikely that we ever will, because social media is about instant gratification. Even if we think about those shoes again, Facebook is not good for retrieving archived information, so oftentimes the amount of effort it takes to find those shoes again will be outweighed by the desire to move on to the next thing.

We don’t go back and look for things we saw on Facebook a week ago, or even an hour ago, because it isn’t practical. I’m sure you’re familiar with the classic scenario:

1. Facebook user stumbles across funny video.

2. Facebook user is reminded of video later and wants to show a friend.

3. Facebook user can no longer find said video.

We are so accustomed to this that we simply move on with our lives and forget about the funny video we saw because there is so much content and minutiae on social media, that we’ve developed technology induced attention deficit disorder. We can’t even process the amount of content that is thrown at us on a daily basis, let alone stop to write all of it down for later. And yes, while you can save posts on Facebook for later, are you likely to save something that isn’t a video of cute kittens or a news story on that political candidate you can’t stand?

If your brand can afford to post viral videos of babies tasting lemons and that fits your image, Facebook can be your best tool, but what about the rest of us? Don’t sacrifice your brand image to try to gain popularity on social media because at the end of the day, your target demographic, the people who are actually looking for you, aren’t going to be very impressed when they see all the cat videos on your law firm’s Facebook page. Remember that brand integrity is more important than "likes."

We’ve talked a lot about what Facebook can’t do for your business, so now you’re probably wondering what Facebook can do for you. Facebook enables us to see what our customers and competition are up to every day. It also helps us stay updated on current events, which is good news if your business is well, news. If it’s not, you can still find a way to make the platform work for you by posting about trending topics that are relevant to your industry and ergo, your customers.

People want to see content that matters to them and that means they will tune out whatever you are trying to sell. Do not flood your Facebook with product features and promotions. Keep things interesting with a mixture of content. Sometimes that means getting creative and finding a way to use current events to your brand’s advantage.

Trying to decide which social media platforms are worth your time? Well, if your business is a B2B brand, invest in Twitter and LinkedIn. If you can invest in decent photography or videography and you have creative, tech-savvy smartphone users on staff, stay active on Instagram, YouTube and other video-streaming platforms. Unlike Facebook, users on Twitter and Instagram are still searching for content by hashtags, so it’s mush easier for people to find you organically. Remember to encourage your customers to leave feedback on Google and Yelp – the two platforms that people are most likely to see first when looking for reviews of your business.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and pressured to sign up for every social media platform out there, especially as new ones sprout up every year, but it’s better to pick and choose which platforms make the most sense for your brand. It simply doesn’t make sense to post low quality images to Instagram or scramble to find someone on your team to run a Snapchat account for your business if most of your customers have never even heard of Snapchat. While it’s good to embrace new technology and remain flexible to current trends and ideas, the most important thing is that you are doing what makes sense for your business and forget the rest.