This has been said by many small businesses over the past 2-3 years. It's just a good investment. Highlights the maxim that "All that glitters, isn't gold"!

Yeah, I'm on the fence about FB myself.

I think some types of businesses can benefit greatly from FB, however, I'm not convinced yet that every business has to be on FB, just to be on FB.

Being a publicly traded company, the investors really need to demand they loosen up on their FB ads.

There's a reason Google makes billions of dollars in revenue through adwords.

This is a laughable article at best. The method this guy is using to make his conclusions do not tell the whole story.

Looks like they were posting content that people were not interested in and ended up spending more than they expected to create engagement.

They ran a short term trial , failed and then make a bold sweeping statement that its not worth it for small businesses.

Here's a good comment from the article:

My company recently did a sale for small retail client with a couple dozen stores in NY/NJ. We paid $75 dollars to promote a Friends & Family sale on Facebook and it generated $75,000 in sales tied to that Facebook-only coupon.

It’s true that Facebook makes you pay to reach for you fans. Facebook isn’t free. It’s a business and entitled to make money, especially when doing so properly can result in extremely successful marketing campaigns with big ROI.

Never use the Promote on Page tool. Use Facebook’s Power Editor tool. The key is good “snackable” content and great real-time targeting.

This writer is a blithering idiot! Did any one follow the link to the fan page? Almost 100% of the posts are sales pitches to something on the site. DERP! No wonder he failed his client.

fb pages is very effective for small business.. because it need cheap investment ... you can grow your auditory..
so its good for mine...

I saw this article myself yesterday. Seems like Facebook it is either the "greatest thing ever" or pure crap. Basically people play to the hype vs. the truth.

The truth is that for most businesses Facebook is a useful tool. It is not perfect by any means but it can be one of many marketing channels they use.

I'm now having email conversations with Elan, he continues to blame FB model and hasn't owned up to the fact that a major reason the whole thing failed is because the fan page is full of sales spam. We'll see what happens next.

I don't know about pages...but Facebook ads are the best for the travel niche.My brother has a villa on the most popular mountain in these parts and he sold every single spot he had for the whole season.Cost of advertising? Just little over 50 euros.

I don't think Facebook fan pages are a good investment for offline businesses either but the is right to a degree just for the wrong reasons.