>Facebook Is Perfect, Isn’t It? No, Not Quite
>
This is labeled Part Four, but that is because I intend to place all four parts of this almost ten thousand-word article about Facebook on both the blog Xtreme Money Machines
and
http://HotAirMachine.blogspot.com
After the final installment is posted, this will read like a mini-book for my readers who can read the entire blog in one reading or several, but importantly in order so that it has continuity.
With all the advantages, it is easy to think that using Facebook does not have any downsides. Just as in everything in the world Facebook has its downside. Some of them are little more than minor irritants, but others are big problems, big enough for large organizations to have kept away from Facebook.
Data Leakage
This is the biggest and probably the only problem when it comes to companies joining Facebook. Even if all the security in the world is made use of to protect data and make it secure, there is nothing that can be done with the people working there.
Many employers feel that giving access to Facebook is dangerous because it is possible for company employees to share sensitive information with their network most of whom would not be employees of the same organization.
Some of the biggest problems to come up with Facebook are those that deal with employees ranting and raving about their organization on Facebook. Many employees have found that their comments about their job have even cost them their job. Yet, this is a small irritant when it is compared to other bigger problems.
For instance, there are a number of organizations that forbid the use of phones inside the office, and employees are not allowed to access their mail. However, they may be online and access the Internet because their work calls for this. A corporate firewall usually enforces this.
Although a corporate Facebook account can be useful to send messages to others within the same organization, and even share information, making their workplace a little fun too, it is dangerous because this network is connected to the outside world. If any employee discusses information that may not be restricted within the company, but is not meant for the general public, they may be putting their organization at risk. This is more so for publicly listed companies than for privately held ones.
From the point of view of employers there is no other way, yet, thinking back to progress, such restrictions have not managed to last long. It was not that long ago that the Internet was not given to employees, and before that, computers were thought of as a security risk. Now, even though phones are thought of as the same, most organizations do not have any problems with phones that do not have cameras. It is only when you have a camera phone that they have a problem.
Most of these restrictions have passed away, and so maybe in the future the restriction on Facebook will as well. It is therefore good to plan for that day because it will come. Many people thought that giving Internet connections to people would mean inside information going out. Now, most companies have realized that there is no such fear, and educating employees on what can and cannot be disclosed to non employees has had better returns that restricting access to the Internet.
In fact, the only reason why companies even restrict mail access is not so much that it is a security risk but that they feel that employees will spend too much time checking their personal mail rather than working.
Tone of Voice
This may sound a little odd, but a number of small businesses are finding it hard to modify their marketing to take advantage of Facebook. They have been accustomed to the traditional methods of advertising like newspapers, TV commercials and/or radio ads. When it comes to Facebook, the same formal voice that was used for so many years successfully just does not work.
Facebook prefers a more casual type of communication, and many users just ignore anything that even resembles formal communication. This means that all your researching and targeting of your audience will come to naught if you are not able to market the way the Facebook users prefer.
This is not a big hurdle, and is one that must be crossed. The Internet is the future, and sticking to “Tried and Tested” systems of marketing will not work in the years to come.
Marketing in itself is dynamic and with the pace of progress online, it is even more dynamic. It is the person who stands out from the crowd who will be noticed.With Facebook offering such a cheap way to advertise, many small businesses are taking advantage of this. This means that unless your advertisement is striking, it will be lost along with everything else, and not net you any benefit.
Transition Time
Facebook is evolving so fast that to them a couple of years is like eons. For most of us however, that is how long it takes for us to learn and get settled in something. For example, Facebook used their own take on HTML and called it FBML an acronym for Facebook Markup Language. Just when advertisers were beginning to get comfortable with FBML, Facebook dropped it in favor of iFrames. As already mentioned, life online is really fast, and things happen in minutes. In the real world, life is a little slower. Most marketing managers are not necessarily tech savvy and it therefore takes them time to find out things and learn. They expect certain stability in their business relationship, and having things so dynamic that they will have to once again start from scratch and learn a new technology is putting them off.
Hackers
Although Facebook has taken hackers seriously, simply because there are so many users it is a little difficult to check each and every user. Many hackers use Facebook to gather a lot of personal information about people and companies that use Facebook. A number of high profile cases have come up in the past couple of years when hackers were able to put in their own code into a page and get even information that was blocked from public view. This has left a bad taste and there are a number of forums that are dedicated to anti Facebook people.
While this has no direct impact on a business as such, it is still important because hackers can use your Facebook page to obtain information. This is an even bigger problem because Facebook will automatically find your page to be the culprit and block your page. If you are actively using Facebook in your marketing strategy you cannot afford to have your company page go down for a week while Facebook decides whether you were genuinely taken advantage of, or if you were deliberately doing something illegal.
One example of this was when a dating service put up pictures of topless models in their ads. Not only were their ads not delivered, their page was blocked. The company was not only a genuine one; it was a paid advertiser on Facebook.
Although having topless pictures did infringe on the terms of use of Facebook, the company was of the opinion that they should have specified this in advance, or at least allowed them to carry on the ad campaign but with different pictures. Issues like these lead many to believe that Facebook has still not evolved to the stage when it can actually become a useful to businesses.
Conclusion
Going online is the future for all organizations big or small. Facebook is just one facet of this online presence. Marketing online is not limited to Facebook, nor can it even be considered to be the most effective. Yet, Facebook offers some compelling reasons for companies to use it to maximize their business.
There are both advantages as well as disadvantages to using Facebook, and it may well be true that it has still not reached the sophistication of other more established online names. However, with their popularity only increasing and showing no signs of diminishing, it would be rash not to include Facebook into the overall marketing strategy.
At the pace at which Facebook has developed over the past few years, waiting until everything is set is not a good idea because at that time you will be totally unfamiliar with how Facebook works, let alone how to use it.
In addition, Facebook is not something that you use as a one time marketing strategy. It takes a long time, sometimes years to develop a network so unless you start now, you would not be able to take advantage of Facebook when you do want to. In fact, this facet of Facebook, the time it takes you to set up a network, is one big reason for a number of marketing honchos to not think of Facebook. Even those who have actively started on Facebook find that the amount of time that they spend on Facebook building their network means that they have little time to even think of other social media.
It is important to remember that with all their imperfections, Facebook still offers a compelling reason for every business to be there. It is cheap and you can even do everything you want to for free if you want to. Although, you may not get the use of certain facilities that will definitely help you a lot, there are few other places where you can start off at free, and go up in stages depending on what your budget is.
It is effective – all said and done, marketing on Facebook is efficient. If handled properly just using Facebook for marketing is more than sufficient to get you the sales that you are looking for and once again if handled properly you do not even have to spend any money to do this.
At the rate at which certain groups grow, it all depends on you finding something of interest to which people can connect. If you do find that, there is every possibility that you too can have a network that measures in the tens of thousands. Once this network is set up, it is just following a few basic uidelines on what to do and what not to for you to immediately start seeing results.
Though it is not the only way, Facebook as of now is the best choice when it comes to social marketing, and you do need social marketing. Even now everybody knows the value of door to door marketing and Facebook offers you the capacity to do the same thing but in a virtual environment http://xtremeMoneyMachines.blogspot.comhttp://xtrememoneymachines.blogspot.com
gamesbaseball 