Should I still use Facebook for my business in 2021

Should you use Facebook for business in 2021?

Now I’m getting this question a lot because there’s so much confusion around whether you should continue to use Facebook for your business or not. Now there are lots of people out there who will say that ‘Yes, you should be using Facebook all the time.’ There are other people out there who say you are wasting your time if you are not doing it correctly on Facebook.

So in this little article, I wanted to talk about some of the pros and the cons of using Facebook in 2021. And then at the end, I’m going to give you a recommendation on what you should do and what I believe is the right way for you to make that decision.

Should I still use Facebook for my business in 2021 – Pros

So let’s look at the pros about why you should be on Facebook.

1. Understand your target audience.

Facebook is a fantastic platform for data. It collects so much information about everybody that’s on it. And this is part and parcel of why they are so powerful because they have so much data about everybody. And it’s not just data about you, but it’s also the activities that happen on your Facebook page as well.

A Facebook business page gives you ways to connect and communicate with your audience and Facebook lets you organize and target the right audience for your page. I want you to think of it like a focus group, where the people that are following you are there because they are aware of your business and they want to know more.

While they are expecting to get really interesting and engaging information from your page, you can also collect information about what they are doing on your page through their participation with you. Facebook Insights, give you an amazing amount of information about your fans and what they’re doing actually on your page.

So it’s great to look at who it is that’s there because then you can also make informed marketing decisions. If you ever want to go and market to people, just like those people that already visit your page, Facebook will give you that opportunity to do that. You could also tell a lot about what people are doing just through their different interactions on your page and posts.

You can find out what’s engaging them what sort of posts they like. Whether it’s a video post,  a link post or whether it’s an image post, you can find out from people’s comments about whether they like what you’re doing or whether they like to see a bit more about what you’re doing.

As you can see from the image above, these insights tell us the type of post that has attracted the greatest response. In this case, the 2 posts with the highest engagement are written posts with an image. You can see that posts with attached links were not too popular, so maybe looking at the strategy to make sure all posts are content with an image.

 

2. Build a community on Facebook

So the business pages are a great way to gather your customers together, put your prospects together, put your fans together, and give them all sorts of information that they may be requiring. Whether it’s things like sharing opinions, maybe they’ll do reviews for you or you do reviews on products that they’re interested in. It also lets them voice any problems or concerns that they may have with you or your business. And you can get some great feedback as well. So that’s number two, building a community.

3. Facebook is good for Search Engine Optimization

Now, why would this be important for you? Well, Facebook can be a great way to drive traffic back to your website or your blog. And I’m very keen on you doing that. The posts that you have, the links on those posts, and other actions that are contained in your Facebook page can also give you a little bit of an SEO boost as well because some of that is indexed by different search engines.

Now, one other thing that I do want to mention is having a local business…

What if you’re a local business and you’ve got a physical shop or a physical location where you service a local area? Having your About section filled out on your business page with the correct name, address, and phone number (NAP) and all the details about your business is going to go a long way in helping other citation companies.  Other local listing companies like yellow pages, for instance, and Hotfrog and literally hundreds of different local citation companies out there use the Facebook information to fill their particular website.

So you might discover your local business on a random website you’ve never heard of before. And you’ll be thinking, how did they get my information?

Well, that’s because they went to places like Facebook to get that information. So if that information is not there or it’s incorrect, then you’re going to have an incorrect listing on some other platforms as well.

4.  Get in front of your clients and customers every single day.

The great thing about Facebook is obviously everybody’s on it. Everybody’s using it all the time. You don’t need an introduction to it because most people know what it is. They’re on it every day. They’re on it for a long period of time. And it’s still the number one social platform right now, where people are hanging out, even in heading into 2021.

So it’s still very important. It’s still a very vital place to share information, share news, and share things with friends. You want to make sure that you’ve still got some content out there, but as I said, you want to pay attention to the recommendations I’m going to give you at the end of this article.

As of today, there are about 2.8 billion people on Facebook. There are a lot of people lurking on there, not as many active users as there used to be, but still, it’s a profitable place for you to be playing on and getting in front of the clients that potentially could be there for you.

Should I still use Facebook for my business in 2021 – Cons

So what are the things that you shouldn’t be doing? Why shouldn’t you be using a Facebook page? Here are the cons for you.

You should not be using a Facebook page if…

1. You are going to use it to sell, sell, sell on your page organically

So people don’t want to be sold to all day. Facebook has got a lot of ads as it is already. And if you’re going to use your page just to promote your products and services, you’re going to find people turn off pretty quick and they won’t come back and visit you.

So don’t get stuck just thinking, well, what else can I sell?

Make it about you, make it about stories about you. Let people know the real people behind the business of your business.

2. Your target market is not on Facebook

You shouldn’t be on Facebook if your market isn’t on Facebook. Now I’ve said in the previous paragraphs that your market is probably on there’s there are 2.8 billion people on Facebook, but not everybody’s on Facebook. So if you’re a niche business or your a local business and your potential customers are not on Facebook and they’re not likely to be on Facebook, then it probably makes sense for you not to waste your time getting on there as well.

3. You don’t have the resources to be effective on Facebook

Don’t build your page up and then make it look like a ghost town. So if you don’t have the resources or the ability to keep up the maintenance to actually get in there and keep posts updated and keep active on there, that’s probably going to be a bit of a struggle for you to maintain that.

I would recommend that you probably would not be in your best interests to be doing that.

4. You are not willing to pay for results

These days, it’s a pay to play platform. If you’re going to create and put out information on your posts, there’s a fair chance, and I’ll show you this in a moment with a case study, that there is not going to be anybody looking at your posts.

It’s rare that people visit Facebook pages these days, they rely on the newsfeed to see your posts. And if your post is not appearing in their newsfeed, then they’re not going to see it there.

How do you get in the newsfeed?

The best way to do that with a business page these days is to run an ad.  You need to be running ads to get any traction on Facebook these days.

Organic Facebook reach is dead.

You might hear that around lots of sites these days. I want to share with you a little case study about Converse sneakers. You’ve all heard of them. Below here, you can see how many people like Converse shoes. There are 46+ million people that like the brand Converse shoes. That’s a lot of people.

Lots of people over the period of the last 15 years have followed Converse shoes. And that’s pretty impressive, but here’s what’s happening with Converse shoes. In the last six months of 2020, I think they may have posted three or four posts. That’s it, organically.

They were organically posting very regularly and consistently nearly every week or every couple of days.  Take a look down below here, you’re going to see one of the last posts that they did on October 9, 2020.

And at the time of this article, it’s now nearly 8 to 10 weeks later. And you can see that only 202 people liked this video, 59 comments, and 20 shares.

Now in my book, that’s about 281 interactions on this post. And now think about this, 281 out of 46 million is extremely low… I can’t even tell you what number it is because it’s 0.000116 of a percent of engagement on that post. How did I get that number?  All I’ve done is divide the number of engagement actions divided by the number of people that actually liked the page.

And it’s a very low engagement rate. So Converse has said, “why are we wasting our time and effort putting organic stuff up there? We don’t need to do that anymore. Let’s just get rid of it and let’s go and stop wasting our time organically”.

Hopefully, you can see in this case study, that this is not just a one-off instance.. it’s across the board at Facebook.

What do I recommend for Facebook in 2021?

What would I recommend if you were getting started or you’re wanting to know whether to use Facebook or not? There are only three reasons why you should be on Facebook in 2021

1.If you are going to Run Ads

If you’re going to run ads, then definitely be on Facebook.

2. Keep the pulse alive

Only if you want to keep your page alive with a heartbeat because people may come across your page here and there. And if it looks like you haven’t posted for a year or two, they’re going to think that your business is dead.

So I would continue to post maybe once a week, nothing special. Don’t go out of your way, making a lot of effort, just show people you still have a heartbeat.

3. Send social and SEO signals

The final reason is to send social and SEO signals to search engines and other listing sites. So, as I said earlier, you want to make sure that if you are a business, you’ve got your name and address and phone number filled out and all the other details about your business on the About page.

Do not waste time and money and especially do not pay an agency or a social media manager to be managing your social media or your Facebook if you’re only going to do organic. It’s not worth the effort, okay?

If you’re staying on Facebook to keep up with the competition and that’s all you’re doing it for, stop wasting your time.

Really, seriously think about what else could you be doing rather than spending effort and time on Facebook.

If you like Facebook and want results, then pay for it!

Facebook has changed and if you’re not changing with it, then you are going to head the wrong way enthusiastically. Okay, hopefully, this has been something really interesting for you. I’d love to know more about your thoughts and whether you intend to stay on Facebook as well.