Ok hands up, Facebook was never entirely free, it’s always taken time to generate content and maintain your presence on Facebook. And time = money.

One of the most appealing things about Facebook is that most of the Internet using population is on it and if you could folks to click that ‘like’ button, well, you had ‘em.

Things have changed, a lot.

Over the last couple of years, many changes have occurred to business pages (sorry, timelines) – moving to the timeline design, losing the tab format, losing the obvious landing page to name but a few. And don’t forget there are just simply hundreds of millions more users on there than 2 years, you’ve got more noise to compete against.

But the biggest change? Visibility – thanks to Facebook’s algorithm, Edgerank, which dictates what percentage of the people who like your page actually see what your post.

2 years ago – you could expect 80-90% of your followers to see your posts.

Now - for small businesses you’re looking at 30-40% visibility, for larger businesses that percentage goes down to a paltry 15%. Eek….

Unsurprisingly, many businesses aren’t happy about this. Some now employ the tactics of the ‘share this post if/like this post if’ quick engagement post (although I understand it, it’s lazy marketing in my book) to try to boost their Edgerank. Others have just wondered why their engagement rate has dropped through the floor.

And the rest?

They pay. Using the Facebook advertising model, they hand over cash on a regular basis to Facebook to promote either their page or individual posts. Those ads show up as an advert or a sponsored story – you’ll have seen them filtering through your stream by now I’m sure.

And there’s a problem with those sponsored adverts. I’m starting to see the same brands advertising on Facebook in the same way, all the time. And it’s annoying, to the point where the brand is potentially devaluing itself to it’s target audience.

(Image courtesy of Darren Dean)

Oops. Handing over cash and not helping their brand in the long-term (even though they get some short-term hits). Sainsbury’s and Aviva are both guilty of this recently for me.

Should all businesses be spending money on Facebook Advertising?

Yes, if:

➢ Your business is suited to Facebook (most B2B business aren’t, in my view)
➢ You want to boost your engagement and visibility of your posts.
➢ Your content is good/engaging/creative etc…

If you’re not using Facebook advertising but Facebook is a major part of your social media marketing, it’s time for a rethink.

You need a balance of consistent, compelling, creative content and then use advertising for certain posts where you want your reach to increase towards 75% of your followers (and others). Where you use advertising, don’t run campaigns for too long otherwise the same users may see the same adverts time and time again, and that may well not do you any favours when they just want to see what their mates are up to!

What do you think: are you running a Facebook page that’s producing a return, has high engagement and reach without advertising? I’d love to know!

Are you considering starting using Facebook advertising this year? There’s a good article here with some tips.

Jan

The post Facebook: No longer a free social media tool for business? appeared first on The Net Advantage.

Marmite are also now teaming up with Blippar to allow users to pull virtual information and recipes about the product from the product label – cute.

Is it exciting? Yes. Is it perfect? No. Why?

• You need to have an apple or android smartphone or tablet, blackberry and non-smartphones miss out.
• You need to have downloaded the Blippar app onto your phone or tablet.
• You need to know what Blippar is in the first place.
• You need to be bothered to want to access the ‘exclusive content’ – if they were giving me chance to win something amazing, maybe, but finding my nearest store or a free recipe – probably not going to swing it for me.
• A lot of the advertising was newspaper-based – I don’t read newspapers, I have my iPad.
• If you’re out and about the advertising needs to be located somewhere with wifi (if you don’t have 3G).
• It doesn’t have mass appeal … yet. Few people know about augmented reality and have a smartphone/tablet and know about blippar and have downloaded it and know to look out for it in adverts.

I think  a lot of thought needs to be put into using augmented reality as part of a marketing campaign. Whilst it’s potential is amazing, it still needs to be relevant, scalable, have interesting content and be widely accessible. Otherwise it’s just another costly marketing trick with minimal ROI.

What do you think, can augmented reality be a good marketing tool?

Posted by: Jan Minihane

The post Augmented Reality with your Marketing anyone? appeared first on The Net Advantage.