Your Marketing $’s are Working for FB, not you

Social media  links have become a ubiquitous part of marketing collateral. Over the past year I have seen an explosion of these buttons—online, on billboards, in print and even TV ads.

I wonder, however, if companies have understood the implication of outsourcing their most prized resource…their community. I also wonder if the trade-off, of hosting the community on FB in order to grow it faster, is worth it.

To understand what exactly companies have handed over to Facebook, I looked at the FB pages of the top five cars sold in April 2011. These are:

Best-selling cars in the US
Model	Facebook Page	FB Community size
Ford F-Series	http://www.facebook.com/fordtrucks	245430
Chevy Silverado	http://www.facebook.com/chevysilverado	238564
Chevy Malibu	http://www.facebook.com/chevrolet	652102
Nissan Altima	http://www.facebook.com/nissanaltima	22804
Ford Fusion	http://www.facebook.com/ford	837033
Total		1995933

           

The facts:

·          Just the top five car models have built a community of close to 2 million car fans.

·         All, barring Nissan, have the FB widget on their site. In other words they are sending their community over to their Facebook page.

·         These are just the official pages of the five best selling models of April 2011. The overall community of car fan pages is many multiples of this…especially if you include the Car publications, TV shows, blogs, special interest groups  etc.

·         All of this data means Facebook has the most powerful community of car lovers, potential car buyers, enthusiasts ever assembled in one place.

·         This is probably true for every industry and every product.

What does all this data tell Facebook:

·       FB knows my favorite car or cars.

·         It knows where I stay country and city.

·         It probably has my contact details down to my mobile number.

·         Data mining will tell it what other cars could interest me, and that’s just the start.

All in all companies are handing over serious intelligence to FB. I don’t know how most  companies evaluate social media ROI’s. But if the community size is a parameter—and it probably is—then it’s a lot of hogwash. 

Here’s why:

·         The biggest number of “likes” to a fan page comes not from within FB but from the widgets that we put up on our sites…or the buttons in our print and TV marketing collateral. I know this because I have handled enough media sites and their Facebook Fan pages and seen how the number of “likes” to my fan pages jumps up after I put the FB widget on my site or in my magazine.

·         I have not seen any data from Facebook that can validate or dispute this and I’m not surprised. Why would they give out information that basically says my marketing is creating their community?

·          I create the fan page and the widget with the expectation that my message will appear in the comment stream of my fan and their friends would be able to see it and “like”…therefore creating a ripple effect…or the viral aspect of social media marketing.

·         If the ripple effect is true then the “fans” on my Facebook page should grow exponentially even if my marketing budget remains the same. In fact, I should be able to pull the FB widgets from my sites and still the “fan” base should continue increasing. I have not seen this happen on my sites. Maybe it’s time you pulled the widget to see if the ripple is working for you.

The horror story continues. The Facebook Fan page I create allows three entities to post content on it:

·         I can post content, as well as modify the page a bit—including the Left Hand Panel.

·         Anyone who likes my page can post or comment on status updates.

·         Facebook  owns a lot of real estate on the Right Hand Panel. They use this for internal and paid ads. Think about it. As a marketer you want your visitor’s undivided attention. That is why you do not allow ads of different products--say Wranglers on a truck website--on your site. However FB can and does use up your Right Hand Panel to divert attention from your product.

·         I’ve so far not seen any Fan page with a competitor’s ad on it, nor do I know if FB has rules against such a thing, but the possibility of your competitor showing up on your Fan page exists.

Third Party Ads on your Fan Page

Finally, building a loyal community is the Holy Grail for every business. It takes a great product, a brilliant marketing strategy and some serious dollars over a sustained period of time to get that loyalty. Are we so easily handing over this precious commodity to a third party because it enables better community interaction? Won’t it be better to build that community on our real estate? Are we handing it over because it is free? Is the price of free acceptable? Have we evaluated the consequences of this trade off?


Postscript: This is Part I of a three part series. Part II looks at the potential damage pushing your data to FB can do. Part III is about creating the right social media strategy.