Bloggertone » Marketing » Is my Facebook time a waste of time?

Is my Facebook time a waste of time?

by fionawhite on April 21st, 2010
16 Comments



Social networking is a must, in my opinion for every business. I suppose it’s more important for some than others, but that’s a discussion for another day. There are so many options out there that it’s sometimes difficult to tell the ones that are helping your business to the ones that are just wasting your precious time.

I really enjoy social networking and the feeling of excitement when someone comments on something you’ve written, or decides to follow you on Twitter. It’s definitely a great way to gain interest in your business. It’s like word of mouth for the technological age!

But lately I find myself spending far too long on Facebook. Its just too easy to spend hours wandering in and out of peoples pages, looking at photo’s of people that you don’t even know and joining useless groups!

I must say I enjoy chatting to my friends and reading their updates, and when you are away from home it is a great way to keep in touch but is it somewhere that can help my business to grow? Do people take things seriously on Facebook?

Have you used Facebook to promote your business? Have you had any positive response from it? Is it helping or should we stick to other social networking tools and leave Facebook for recreation?



Category: Branding, Marketing Strategy, Social media Marketing

Tags: , , ,

The Author: fionawhite

Fiona White is a freelance journalist based in Waterford, specialising in all aspects of radio production and print services. She has worked at Today FM, 98FM and writes for online and print publications and websites. Having studied Radio Production and Media Production Management at Ballyfermot College of Further Education and Print Journalism at Independent Colleges and having worked at various radio stations in Dublin, Fiona has moved to her hometown of Waterford and set up as a freelancer. For further information please email fiona-at-fionawhite.net http://www.fionawhite.net

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  • http://www.encouragingexcellence.ie/ Mairéad Kelly

    I used Facebook to promote adult-ed classes and workshops I was running, 4 of the students from the last term had seen the classes on my page on Facebook, yet nobody acknowledged seeing to the workshop events I ran. To me Facebook is simply a means for Brand Awareness, I do have people say to me “I saw your page on Facebook, really interesting stuff, nice to put a face to the page” when at networking events.

    Having said that, the only time I’ll spend more than 5 minutes on Facebook or Twitter is at night, when I’ve switched off from work, otherwise I dip in an out when I think of it and sometimes might not dip in at all some days.

  • Anonymous

    I recently set up a facebook page – purely for SEO reasons as I think there is an overkill of business jumping on the facebook wagon. Speaking with friends – even if they become a fan of your page they normally hide your updates in their news feed so technically you are talking to yourself. I will keep my page updated but won’t spend my quality time on it.

  • http://www.btbtraining.com/blog Niall Devitt

    Any business that ignores FB does so foolishly in my opinion. I’ve had clients from LinkedIn & Twitter so far but am still waiting on Facebook, In saying that, I have only really started to take it seriously since Jan. For me, I think its very mush down to the individual, Some people/organisations will struggle to optimise FB for biz where as others will do very well. The point is none of these tools are silver bullets, they all require you to invest time to learn how to use them wisely.

  • http://www.businessopportunitiesandideas.com John Crickett

    I’d tend to agree with jenniebyrne it could be a distraction and not particularly productive as it’s very easy for people to hide the updates – I know I’ve done that to most of the pages I “like”.

  • http://www.seefincoaching.com/blog Elaine Rogers

    I have rubbished my personal facebook page by connecting to non-friends – and get bombarded with invites to all things every day – my family and friends feeds are lost within, so I shy away from it unfortunately.
    I would imagine my Facebook business page would benefit me locally (http://www.seefincoaching.com) if I was to update it!!
    However, (I could be wrong here) I don’t feel it would benefit my corporate business http;//www.smartsolutions.ie (not live yet)

  • http://twitter.com/_FionaWhite Fiona White

    Thank you all for the comments!
    I think I’ll be trying to spend less time on Facebook from now on. I definitely find interesting information from time to time like good events that are coming up and what new articles are on Bloggertone ;) but apart from that I’m not learning anything new.
    I’ll still post business info but won’t expect too much back from it, if something does come out of it it’ll certainly be a nice surprise ☺
    I agree with Niall too, it’s important to be there! Ignoring it completely is not an option! It doesn’t take too much to update it so I just have to try and do that and then log off!

  • Anonymous

    I don’t use FB for personal reasons although I do hav a profile. From a business perspective I have set up a FB biz page some time back and that is where it stopped. I am getting good results from my other online efforts and that is where I am investing my energies. I do think FB can be a useful tool but it really is a time thing for me. I think too many people spread themselves thin trying to do a little bit of everything and achieving nothing. You need a plan or as you point out it is possible to waste valuable hours. Having said all this I will get launched this year. Date TBC :-)

    Paul

  • http://www.codegaconsulting.com Una Coleman

    The problem with FB is that things can get muddled very easily – personal pages and profiles getting mixed up with business pages and “friends” blasting sales stuff every other minute into one’s personal pages. It’s important to be disciplined, in terms of one’s own time allocation, who you accept and on which profile. Here are some stats that I found, via Twitter recently, which speak for themselves:

    The latest stats on Facebook:

    • Facebook Ireland Stats:
    Active Users – 1.45m
    847k active daily users
    83% of users come back to facebook every week
    73% penetration of the online population
    55 / 45 Male / Female
    27% of users are > 35 years of age
    35% of users are 25 – 34 years of age

  • http://twitter.com/_FionaWhite Fiona White

    Wow, very interesting stats there. That puts things into perspective a bit more so you can see who your potentially selling to! thanks Una!

  • Anonymous

    I think FB can be a very effective tool for businesses, but I also think it really depends on you line of business and the type of customer you cater to. Granted, having a presence on FB is another great and free way for consumers to find you and learn more about your company, but you also need to have a well developed plan and frankly some businesses just aren’t all that interesting for people to really get excited about on FB. http://www.kdf-comp.com

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  • Anonymous

    I’ve tried a couple of times since FB’s beginning to make a go of it for business purposes. Each time things got hopelessly muddled. How many of us want to have relatives, old school mates, and church parish members looking over our shoulder as we network with other business folks? Not me. It’s like bringing them along to the local Chamber of Commerce meeting! lol With that said, the new public pages do offer a good opportunity for branding that also gives search engine energy, so I am considering that.

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  • Inspiringonechildatatime

    Yes I believe that it is a waste of time and truly overrated by businesses.  I have tried all kind of ways to get them to purchase and I really have a great product.  I have notice that it you put things on there spiritual they click like….if you say help me with the product you get nothing.  However when the shoe is on the other foot……they track you down for help.  Also there is alot of scamming going on there.  So I don’t know about facebook anymore.  Basically for 2012, if they are not supporting me….I might delete them or just start another page for those that truly support me so that I don’t lose them running behind the ones that don’t care.  Also even it they don’t have you on their newsfeed, for the most part  they still get your inboxes.  Facebook….nope another level for me this year.  Any suggestions on other social media sites?

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