Has Facebook peaked already?
You can't shift these days for people exhorting you to join the social networking bandwagon. Everywhere you turn there are offers of advice and training on how to get your slice of the action. We've even launched our own training course to help people effectively implement social media as part of an overall marketing plan.
And yet, confusingly, I'm also starting to read about how Facebook is on its way out. That users are switching off, and that it could be dead in the next 5 years. What is going on? Most people I know haven't even started yet and it may already be too late!
Apparently in May 100,000 British users kicked their FB habit, and 6m did the same in the USA, as a reaction to the most famous social networking site becoming too commercialised and mainstream. And my own friends have talked about "culling" their accounts to get rid of the clutter.
In Real Business magazine this month (the offline version) there was a debate for and against the statement: "Will Facebook be dead in 5 years?". Actually, it seemed to me that neither writer really thought it would die because what they violently agreed on was the incredible pace of innovation and change in the online world. So whatever Facebook is now, chances are it will be different next time you look at it. And it may even be replaced by a completely new phenomenon. Just as Google out-platformed Microsoft and Facebook aims to do the same to Google, so will Facebook meet its nemesis.
What does this mean for the vast majority of us? Do we care who or what is leading the way? I don't think so. What we do need to understand and care about is how the way we (and our customers) access and consume information, and how we form and nurture relationships, has fundamentally changed. Because the choices of when, how and if to communicate have never been so great.
Don't worry that you may have missed the boat. Every UK SME still needs to be actively considering if they should and how they can use Facebook (and/or Twitter/LinkedIn/Youtube) to engage prospects and customers. Each network has their own strengths and weaknesses and you need to work out the right combination for you. For example, I was recently co-presenting a seminar on social media and I was discussing opportunities to exploit social networking with a Foster Care Agency. For them LinkedIn was a great way to engage with their public sector customers, while Facebook could give them a more human and accessible front to find new foster families.
From our experience at The Purple Edge, and from talking to many fellow networkers, Facebook business pages can be hard to make work effectively, unless you are a major brand, as they lack the personality and human face of an individual. Stimulating interaction can be tough. But social networks have an increasing impact on search rankings, so for that reason alone every small business should have a presence that they can maintain with minimum effort.
One word of warning though, this is not a magic bullet and is not free - it will take up your time. You must make sure that your strategy for using social networking is linked back to your overall online strategy, aiming to drive traffic to your website where you have most influence and control. If your website is not up to scratch then don't get diverted into social networking - you'll be throwing good money after bad!
We'd love to hear your experiences with social networking - good and bad! Leave your comments here.
