Facebook gets a tremendous amount of traffic. They are 10 times more popular then Google, 11 times more popular then MySpace and 59 more times popular then Twitter! On any given day a full 25% of all the United States Internet traffic is Facebook.

However, in my humble opinion (IMHO) they are no longer what they used to be. PPC or even CPM brings spotty results at best and the cost of PPC has soared out of site. I credit the lack of conversions to what I call the "Kid Factor". Facebook is loaded with teenagers and they often times waste your clicks, just because they are interested in your message, but they are not buying customers. The performance is so lack luster that I have stopped using them all together, and I had several accounts going there.

They are full of rules about your advertising and if you violate them, you get banned and you will play Hell to get your account active again.






Here are a few that are easy to violate:
  • No pop ups, either entry or exit, especially those that attempt to keep the visitor with a "Wait, I'll give you a discount" message. When using Affiliate pages, they often change the landing page to include those, and you get banned.
  • No captures required to view the message. In other words, you can NOT require the visitor to submit to a list before you give them the advice. You can capture their info as a result of them reading what they will get first.
  • Then there is friend building, and this one is so-o-o-o-o-o easy to violate. You are limited to 5,000 friends firstly, a big drawback as I see it. In addition you are limited to about 30 invitations per day, more then that you get flagged for spamming and you get banned. 30 per day will take you about 90 to accomplish.
Those are a few main points that get you banned, there are others indeed. Social interaction is the only real way to promote your business using social media, lots of posting, friend building and comments on all of your friends walls. Eventually you can drive some of them to your Facebook page, at first it looks like a great way to promote your site, but once again it is limited to how you can construct it, and therefore unproductive. It is also TREMENDOUSLY time consuming and the ROI is lousy at best.


All in all, it appears that Facebook is very happy to take your marketing budget and they are making billions doing just that. But, they appear to want to keep is as a social interaction service with limited commercializing.

MySpace, while suffering from Facebook abandonment, was much more productive and actually allows banner advertising. MySpace's time has come an gone.

Regardless of what you hear, and you will hear many stories about major corps hiring folks to sit at a desk all day and chat away, Facebook is not the way to success it may appear to be, again IMHO.

I have made my living from Internet Marketing for some good while now, and this forum is the best I have ever belonged too, in fact I don't participate in the others any longer.

Summary:

Forget Social Media Marketing for most types of products, it ain't what it used to be and stick to good old fashioned (seems funny calling it old) marketing techniques you hear about and see demonstrated right here. As it has always been, your list is your most important weapon. Just find what works best for you, Article Marketing, Blog Marketing and PPC are still great ways to build one.

Happy Marketing,

Gordon Taylor