Is Facebook appropriate for businesses?

“Should businesses use Facebook?” remains a very pertinent question. There are times when using Facebook can feel like a strangely hollow, unrewarding experience. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it frequently makes me despair of the human race.

It has become a wasteland of recycled jokes and memes, bandwagon-jumping, pieces of so-called ‘wisdom’ delivered in picture form, baby pictures, selfies, clickbait, compliment fishing and cries for help.

There are still plenty of people on my news feed who make using Facebook worthwhile. I won’t flatter their egos here, but they offer insightful, entertaining, amusing, and, most importantly, original thoughts. Or they use Facebook to show off their beautiful photography.

So, I still freely admit to checking it several times a day – and I use it to post my grumpy-old-man musings, rants and general sarcasm, with my privacy settings carefully set to ‘friends only’.

But Facebook isn’t what it once was – rather like discovering your favourite jumper has become scratchy and irritating. You keep wearing it, just in case, but deep down you know it’ll never be the same.

So should businesses use Facebook in 2014? It sounds like a terrible place, right? The answer isn’t a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – it depends on two further questions, which should be asked of any social media campaign:

1)      Does your audience/customer base use Facebook?

2)      Do you regularly have something to say to them?

If the answer to either is no, then delete that Facebook account right now. Or at least forget trying to set one up.

If the answer to both is ‘yes’, then Facebook remains as relevant today as it ever was. It still has a colossal user base and, as I’ve said, many of those users still visit it several times a day. No other website or app can deliver the same potential audience reach…

In part two we will examine some of the issues to take into consideration when setting up any corporate social media account.