Though lots of people are scrambling to buy social media optimisation packages, some digital marketing experts feel that conducting marketing activities over social networks, has little or no return on investment. They believe that online information propounding the benefits of social media optimisation (SMO) is nothing more than marketing drivel published by so-called digital marketing pundits, looking to drum up business. This is because social networks have:

• Superficial communication: Most Facebook users use the social networking site merely as a communications device for contacting their friends. As Facebook does not need you to remember anyone’s birthday, or their email address, it offers a simple way to stay in touch with friends, without getting too close to them. Such users are generally not interested in buying products/services.
• Low engagement ratio:  Many companies that launched business pages on Facebook, have learnt that very few of their loyal customers sign up as fans, or engage with their page. Take for example, Starbucks. The coffee chain has more than 20 million members, but only about 0.005 people post comments in a day. These comments usually consist of the standard ‘I love the company’ messages, and do not offer any constructive business-related feedback.
• Difficult to keep users engaged: Some Facebook pages, like celebrity pages, have so many comments from fans, that moderators have to simply ignore most of them. For example, the Lady Gaga Facebook page has an astonishing 32 million fans. Whenever a digital marketing message is posted by the celebrity, they receive thousands of replies, making it difficult for them to monitor the content, or process them in a useful manner.
• People are members of too many groups: When a person joins Facebook they usually add all their friends, join relevant groups, ‘like’ their favourite brands, and wait for responses to their comments. Having a conversation on Facebook is like whispering in a busy marketplace. As people rarely receive replies to their comments, they soon begin to ignore the abundance of groups they had joined.

The only way digital marketing professionals can get real value out of Facebook is to purchase digital marketing advertising. Facebook has a massive audience and has come up with many features to help digital marketing advertisers target specific groups of people. Unlike Facebook business pages, Facebook ads provide real and immediate results. Also, you won’t have to spend resources on managing your Facebook business page, and your digital marketing ads will directly send interested customers to your landing page, for conversion purposes.

Of course, this does not mean that you should delete your Facebook business page. Such digital marketing pages are useful for interacting with customers, and building your brand over the long term. Just don’t go overboard with your efforts on it.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing consultancy, and can be contacted on 0845 388 5583 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk.