Facebook ads: a can of worms?

Any experienced social media marketing professional will tell you that buying ‘likes’ for yourFacebook page or any other social media channel via non-channel tools is like buying a fake friend.

Many channels have been rolling out paid facilities whereby you can pay to have your content shared in front of your target audience. In principle this all sounds great, especially if you are just starting out in Facebook and your page is looking rather unliked.

However, this video which was created by a scientist Derek Muller of Veritasium (obviously likes his testing theories) decided to test the Facebook ads buying process rather than atoms. All sounds a little random, perhaps, but if you take the time to watch it will all become very clear.

It’s also likely to leave you with a lot more questions than answers.

Watch: Facebook Fraud

My view is Facebook is one of the hardest social networks to engage on legitimately if you have set up a new page. Don’t get me wrong, it can be done and has been done by us for many pages that we’ve grown from scratch without any advertising. However, as Facebook announced recently, to get any real breathing space on Facebook you are likely to need to pay for it. So, as a business what is the best approach?

Here are a few ideas:

- Use other social media platforms to draw people on to your Facebook page

- Email your existing clients/prospects and encourage them to like your page, but make sure you give them a reason. Your content needs to entice them to want them to want you in their Facebook space

- Once you have a few people on your page engaging eye-catching content becomes key. No engagement (called ‘talking about this’ on Facebook) means you are talking to yourself and wasting time, effort and money

The key to social media success is having a strategy and using that strategy to engage and use your audience to achieve your objectives. With or without legitimate advertising there’s not short cut.

By DMA guest blogger Lynsey Sweales of SocialB and member of the DMA Social Media Council