CEO Blog: Is Facebook Really Good For Business

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Comment by Santanu on September 20, 2011 at 11:28am

Datis - good points. There are all sorts of problems with facebook for sure. However, it is where everyone is at.

 

It seems to make sense that a better usage of time is for us to be where everyone is hanging out at, to direct them to our sales site...vs trying to create our own hangout site, and tell them to come hangout and bring friends.

I don't disagree with the concept, but the time and utility factor for school owners is really limited. It's much more efficient to get to students and their friends on FB since they are already there.

Like it or not, facebook is here to stay, and businesses will be behind the curve if they decide to remove from it. Even Google+ couldn't knockdown FB (I think I read somewhere that google's CEO stopped using Google+ lol). It's already a lot of work to maintain a regular sales site and a facebook site...but then on top of that, our own social site?

I don't know man. I think maybe this concept is better for bigger schools. But schools like mine, where we are still trying to get it together and grow, this seems like a lot of effort for a very unspecified return.

Comment by Datis Mohsenipour on September 20, 2011 at 10:42am

Santanu - there are some very important things to consider here:

1) Facebook has so many distractions - When one visit's your FB page they may get distracted by a chat message, a new notification, or even your competition's paid advertisement on the side of their page. By integrating a social wall into your website, you are limiting these distractions and making better use of the leads that you worked hard to bring over to your website. 

 

2) With any social page you will have to monitor negative posts and spam - this is the reality of social media, and turning something negative into something positive publicly will reflect well on your business. SocialSites will soon have notification features to make monitoring easier as well. As for monitoring subscriptions, this is a beautiful thing to have. With Facebook you are limited on information about your Fans. With a Social Site, you will have their contact info directly imported into your database! (worth the work if you ask me!)

 

That's my opinion. Thank you kindly for your feedback and longterm contribution to the community Santanu.

Comment by Santanu on September 20, 2011 at 7:56am

Interesting post. The thing is, facebook is an established social media site, 500 million users. You can tap into your friends/students networks, post something on their wall about how great they did in class. People who normally would not care or seek out our services will see that message.

I think purpose in a website is very important. If the purpose of the site is to be a sales site, focus on that. If the purpose is for it to be a social media site, let it be that. But combining the focus to be both sales and social media seems like spreading out the focus too thin, especially for smaller martial arts schools.

 

Plus, the management of your own social site/forum is A LOT of work. Monitoring new subscribers, inflammatory/negative posts, spam, and trying to get people to start using your new social site when they've been on FB for a long time -  lots of unnecessary work that takes away time you could have spent running an event or advertising campaign that would have generated leads.

 

So I have to sort of disagree with Master Dordar's line of logic here. Facebook is a beast. Don't try to fight it by trying to create a mini-beast. Try to harness and leverage its power to your own advantage.

No disrespect meant, by the way. Just sharing my feedback.  I have lots of respect for you guys, you are really doing some great work that is highly influential.

Comment by joel hall on September 20, 2011 at 7:10am

yes definetly