Facebook pages are free, but how much do they cost?
I know a number of businesses who have dropped their web sites in favour of a Facebook page.
Generally these are businesses that are ticking along quite nicely thank you and they feel that a web site adds very little to what Facebook can offer and costs a lot to create and maintain.
I have a lot of sympathy with this view but there are two issues, to be able to send a message to a Facebook page owner you need to sign in to Facebook.
Ten years ago this probably didn't matter too much, but nowadays
- Many people who do not have a Facebook account will have decided not to have one so will be unable to contact you.
- Some people won't be able to create an account as they are at work and need to use a personal email address.
- Some people won't even be able to access the page as Facebook is blocked on the company network.
Suddenly your free page has cost you a query that may have led to some business.
If you are an hotel this could easily have been a Fri/Sat night stay or even a whole week, if you are a restaurant it may have been a group of 10 wondering if they are too large a group, and if you are a pub it may have been a group of potential regulars looking for a place to hold a meeting as a weekly event.
The second problem that seems to be becoming more prevalent is that Facebook may require the user to log in even to view the site, this is a huge no-no for me.
Also I find that Facebook pages are not that good at showing off a businesses to new customers, they tend to work better for existing customers
who want to know which band is playing this Friday.
Less common but possibly more common thab you might expect are searches such as
Worcester <Your business> -facebook -twitter -<some other sites>, for some this becomes a habit
Finally many businesses have their pages set up in such a way that a user can see a bit without logging in, then a big login screen appears and obscures the content, which can be dismissed only to quickly reappear.