Facebook Sucks… you aren’t getting one more dime from me!
I’ve had a Facebook page (facebook.com/cnckingdom) for quite some time for CNCKing.com and have tried A LOT of different “tactics and strategies” from some major FB gurus to grow the community. Let me save you the effort – just buy your friends and fans. The second thing that the gurus say is “make it into a destination” so they come again and again. I’ve performed a test for the past few weeks and here are the results.
Facebook isn’t a business model that makes YOU money, it just makes THEM money
How is that? Well, you have to pay to acquire “fans” but then continually PAY Facebook to “advertise” page updates in order to keep them coming back. Just because a fan likes your page doesn’t mean they will EVER see an update from it… unless you give Facebook some bills. Want proof?
I spent a few hundred dollars in the past few weeks building-up my “fan base” – anybody with a massive fan base MUST either pay or trick people (contests, like us to see x results) to build them up. The result after a few hundred dollars was about 750 “fans”. The result on my sales? Zero… 10x more fans yet a 0% increase in sales? That makes no sense! These were targeted fans by the way, males who were fans of lasers, routers, 3d printing within more wealthy American postal codes etc… so I knew money wasn’t an issue at their end. Interesting how I geo-focused on the USA yet the UK is the most popular city regarding fans (???).
Video Test
I wasn’t impressed to say the least, how is it possible to grow a fan base and produce no results? They must not be seeing my posts is the next logical step. So I spent a bit more money promoting one specific post but not just any post. A VIDEO! Why a video? Because I would know EXACTLY how many people actually clicked the video independent of what Facebook was telling me. Besides, a video is more “viral” than text at a much lower barrier of entry. This video was advertised in two ways… first against my fans who were interested in 3D printing and second, against 3d printing enthusiasts who were not fans (to increase my fan count). Each gave me roughly 1600 “views”.
Total “views” is roughly 3400 video views… not bad. What were the results on sales? Zero. ZERO! How can that be? Even if 1% of the people who saw this video bought something, I should be ordering bars of gold pressed latinum on my laptop right now while looking at cute bikini girls on the beach, not digging in the soil for my next meal! Luckily I was smart – I had YOUTUBE to check on. Here is what I see there.
For some reason Facebook won’t show me the # of “clicks and video views” unless I give them more money but suffice it to say, I got more video views from “homepage feeds and subscriptions” than I did from over 3K “video views” FB told me.
Conclusion?
Facebook Sucks for business! Before you tell me “Facebook is about community, not money”, please explain to me clearly why Facebook hides it’s results from me unless I give them more money, tells me at every turn to give them money to “grow my fan base” and “let more fans see this post”. I’m in business to make money, I have no problem giving Facebook a thousand dollars if it makes me a thousand one hundred back but at this rate, I give them a thousand and they give me back a dollar. I also enjoy the idea of building a community of like minded designers, CNC enthusiasts and DYI’ers but as I’ve shown, Facebook isn’t the place for that as there is a permanent and growing paywall between ME and “MY” fans.
Anecdotal Experiences
Before I posted this, I had a chat with a few other Facebook admins with fan counts exponentially higher than mine – their results are similar to mine. Luckily for me, Facebook is only a tool (literally and figuratively) and not my business model. As I’ve shown, if Facebook dies tomorrow, the results for me are nothing but others aren’t as lucky, they spend serious money to grow the fan base and promote in the hopes of having it turn into gold one day. If it isn’t raining gold now, in my opinion, it most certainly won’t be raining gold tomorrow.
Time for action!
I enjoy using Facebook to acquire leads (establish business relationships, get interviews etc.) but as far as giving them anymore money, not going to happen. I didn’t need to spend thousands of dollars to figure-out it’s a loosing proposition like magazine ads I did years back (wait a few months for results the sale guy told me). The internet gives me results NOW and they aren’t in Facebook’s favor.
I’ve removed “CNCKing.com fans” on CNCKing.com’s right margins that use to populate every page on both the main site and the blog, I don’t want my customers or visitors going to Facebook to waste their time, you are a fan, join my newsletter and let’s talk!