After Two Years of Scandal, Does Facebook Still Matter for Social Media Marketing?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Facebook’s reputation has taken a serious beating these past two years.
The carnage brutalized the company’s share prices through 2018 and early 2019, despite a recent recovery that’s led many analysts to proclaim that the worst is over. Perhaps more importantly, Facebook lost millions of active users amid cascading scandal, and has since embarked on an expensive advertising campaign to win some back.
With Facebook temporarily weakened, competing social media platforms pounced. Relative upstarts like Snapchat have deployed an impressive array of new tools for serious business marketers, edging in on ground formerly dominated by Facebook. For businesses wary of Facebook’s reputation struggles — not to mention the company’s very real data privacy issues — it’s worth asking whether Facebook remains a suitable advertising partner.
The short answer is: Yes, it does, because Facebook remains an indispensable social media platform. You’re simply not going to encounter the same broad swathe of active users on any other platform. If your business relies on more than a handful of narrow audience niches with other stomping grounds, you’re almost certain to leave money on the table when you close up shop on Facebook.
Why Facebook Still Matters for Social Media Marketing
Let’s explore eight reasons why Facebook still matters for social media marketing, and why it should still probably have a place in your company’s own social media strategy.
1. It’s Still the Place to Go for Authentic, Community-Driven Conversation
Facebook remains a vital hub for authentic, community-driven conversation. The Facebook page for Freeway Insurance is one of countless examples of business pages where organic conversation is the norm, not the exception. There’s no better way to convince your prospects that you “get it” than by investing in authenticity, and Facebook is a fantastic place to start.
2. Its Active User Figures Are Off the Charts
Facebook appeals to a cross-section of American society. Virtually every major demographic group is represented in numbers here, with hundreds of millions of active users (those active on a weekly or monthly basis, if not more) represented in the United States alone. Globally, Facebook literally has billions of users. There’s simply no better social media megaphone.
3. It Has a Better-Than-Average Suite of Marketing Tools
Facebook is the place to drive organic conversations, to be sure, but it also boasts a superior suite of marketing tools for marketers looking to juice engagement and conversions.
This roundup of more than a dozen powerful Facebook marketing tools is just the start. With so much variety, even the most sophisticated marketers can find what they’re after on the world’s most popular social media platform.
4. Its Domain Authority Is Super High
Facebook’s Domain Authority — in generic terms, its SEO potency — tops the charts, along with other blue-chip web properties like Google. Simply creating and regularly updating a Facebook profile is one of the best SEO moves you can make for your business, particularly if you lack the cash to invest in expensive paid search campaigns or hire an army of writers to create high-value, search-optimized content.
5. For Video, It’s Almost As Useful As YouTube
When it comes to video marketing power, Facebook is a close second to YouTube. Given YouTube’s vast reach and high household name recognition, that’s saying something. If you’re not cross-posting your YouTube videos on your Facebook account, you’re missing out on the non-overlapping portion of your audience — a share that’s greater than you might think.
6. It’s Easy to Respond to Engagement (Without Being Too Available)
Responding to Facebook engagement is as easy as picking up your phone and opening the Messenger app. What’s nice about having a fully fleshed-out Facebook profile, though, is not having to be too available. Simply post your business hours on your profile and you’ll make clear to prospects that you’ve got open- and closed-office hours. The same can’t be said for always-on platforms like Snapchat.
7. Interpreting Facebook Engagement Metrics Is Second Nature
Facebook doesn’t just have the best suite of social media marketing tools this side of anywhere. Its engagement metrics are also easy for non-experts to interpret, and Facebook actually has a robust support staff available to help make sense of numbers that aren’t so clear. Say goodbye to daunting analytics, and hello to a brave new world of advanced DIY marketing.
8. It’s Fun and Intuitive to Use
Speaking of intuitive, Facebook itself is an absolute breeze for business users. Recent redesigns have transformed the platform into a truly accessible, user-friendly product that facilitates serious engagement and delivers meaningful information value. Facebook’s reputation may have taken a hit, but the fact that it’s no longer a chore to use has to count for something.
Like It or Not, Facebook Still Has It
For better or worse, Facebook remains an indispensable marketing platform for businesses of all stripes.
If your business advertises at all and it’s not using Facebook’s marketing capabilities, it’s in a distinct minority. And it may be leaving money on the table.
As you know full well from your own experience as a business owner, it’s important to do business with companies whose values you respect, whose goals align with your own. You don’t want your money to end up in the wrong hands.
But you also know full well that business owners must balance moral imperatives with fiscal duties. You owe it to your business’s bottom line — not to mention the employees who rely on it for their livelihoods — to pursue all reasonable marketing avenues that fit within a coherent outreach strategy.
Anyway, Facebook has made real strides to clean up its reputation and retool its internal operations since the first rumbles of scandal broke in early 2018. If the social media behemoth wants to do right by its own bottom line, it’ll redouble those efforts in the future.
Just be sure to stay abreast of the numerous changes Facebook is bound to make in the months to come. As we’ve seen, some of those changes have precipitated what’s for all intents and purposes a fundamental shift away from the platforms early-2010s incarnation. Look for more along those lines, and be prepared to shift your own marketing strategy accordingly.