Myths Noobie Marketers Believe about Facebook

Interesting. I don't do much with Facebook, but what you say about the MEME makes a lot of sense

Times surely have changed! Sad thing actually, as even Facebook feels saturated sometimes.
Still, there's lots of value there including high quality traffic if you're at the right place, at the right time

Cheers,
Aron

Everything you said is true, but Facebook still brings the good quality targeted traffic. As long as this is the case, I'll keep posting...

It was good while it lasted, there will always be some new, free, targeted traffic.

Sure Facebook has its drawbacks and can seem oversaturated, but you'd be foolish to ignore it -- particularly for local businesses with products or services to sell.

Great post, but to get more paid fans from Facebook it requires a very huge investition, especially for 500k fans. And after that only 5% of your fans will see your Fb posts (of course, if you want more fans to see your update, then you need to pay again).

I think Google+ tend to be more efficient from that point of view...

No Myth. It's true - Facebook is all about relationships and socializing

I agree with what you said except for #1...

I think building relationships with others through facebook is the absolute best way to get more people into your business, people wont always just join you off a article you repost, but if they like that article, and they like YOU.. Your chances are a lot higher.

I disagree completely with #1 and partially with #2.

When you build a solid relationship with your fans, they become your advocates. When they like you and they like what you do, they will not hesitate. Acknowledge and reward them for spreading the word about your product and they will encourage others to do the same. I know FB ads have made it seems like you need to spend to get an audience. But if you treat your fans well, they will reward you with solid engagement within and outside of FB, which is better than likes from complete stangers.

About #2, going viral still helps, especially if you've put your brand or links on images/videos that have gone viral. It helps build brand recognition, which will get you farther and help boost any promotion or marketing efforts.

interesting perspective and some element of truth about how FB pages had evolved.

#1: true to some extent but not entirely. the basis for becoming a giant RSS feed is to have an engaging FB page in the first page, and engagement is about building relationship. there's no 2 ways about it.

#2: feasible approach but you need to create some good content amidst the 'curation' or reposting other people's viral posts or risk losing your identity.

#3: no doubt about it. money loves speed of implementation. If you have deep pockets, you have an advantage in building fanbase faster.

I agree that to make big results on Facebook anymore requires paid advertising. Too much crowded content out there.

I think you're overgeneralizing. Every page, every business and every community is different. On that note, here are my experiences with our Facebook page:

1. It's not about socializing, but we absolutely do NOT treat our fans like cattle. Fans have to feel you care about them and the best way to make them feel you care is to actually care and not just try to fake it. That said, we certainly don't spend time answering each and every message or comment because as you say, it's "time spent away from creating the next blog post or optimizing your site". That said, we also answer enough posts so that people know we're there and engaged. I'd also say that while it's not about us socializing, it can (and should) be a place where your community socializes. Community socializing = lots of comments = lots of engagement = more people seeing your posts.

2. Viral posts are still pretty important to us, but they're not viral because big groups share them, but because small groups, individuals, their friends and their friends' friends' friends' friends share them. No we haven't had 10 million likes on a post, but we've had plenty with over 100,000 likes, which more importantly translates into millions in reach.

3. Our page is just shy of 500,000 likes and almost every single of our likes is organic. We've spent under $200 in ads and never did anything silly like buy likes. We did and do invest a ton of time into our posts, at least eight hours a day every single day. Individual posts often take an hour to write some up to two hours. Given the time investment, I certainly wouldn't call our likes "free" -- but they aren't due to paid advertising (though we did hit up some related and friendly pages and asked them to post about us early in our history, which helped fuel a lot of our early growth).

Like I said, every page, every business and every community is different. I very much doubt if many others could make our social media strategy work for them. But at the same time, I don't think we'd be nearly as successful using any other strategy. It's what works for you that's important, not the "rules" or "myths" that others try to make you believe.

Completely disagree with #1. Every brand, large or small, wants to make an emotional connection with their customers. FB offers the chance to do that.