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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

Generally speaking businesses doesn't have to be on Facebook. It was cool and all when Facebook was the new hotness, but at this point it's wasted energi.

The whole idea that "users will engage with your business via Facebook (or any other social media)" is pretty much snake oil. Facebook engages your customer if they can win a price, or they want to complain, loudly and in public. Neither of these things helps your business.

Assuming no click baiting, I would like to see an honest business that could not function, if they where not on Facebook.

The only change I would like to see in the Facebook news feed is the ability to remember that I just want everything sorted by newest first. Perhaps simply the ability to disable "curated feed". My feed is already curated, by me.

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Check out the Facebook pages of mom and pop stores, grocers and other local businesses in your area. Chances are you'll see a lot of interaction with loyal customers. Check out the Facebook pages of your favorite musicians, lots of interaction there too. It's not because you don't see it that it doesn't exist.

For very local or niche businesses I would say you're right. It's much easier, and cheaper for them and their customer to just maintain a Facebook page, rather than trying to build a website. I don't see a way for Facebook making money of these companies though. It's the companies that bring the audience to Facebook in this case, not the other way around. Facebook in these cases are just a glorified mailing lists.

For mainstream businesses, like chain supermarket, Coca Cola and car makers, I still maintain it's wasted effort.

> For mainstream businesses, like chain supermarket, Coca Cola and car makers, I still maintain it's wasted effort.

I'm working at one of top digital advertising agencies in EU. National and global brands save no buck on their spending on social media presence, and there are plenty of cheap (for them) tricks that result in both additional sales, positive PR and new customers. We also have strong data to back this up and justify our budgets.

Sometimes it costs real peanuts. Its easy to pump sales for soda brand by going to Snapchat with staged clip going "PEOPLE!!! I WANT TO SEE HOW THIS SODA HELPS YOU BEAR WITH CURRENT HEATS!!!" with people in 13-30 range flocking back with clips of them demoing how soda helps them out stay cool. Then brand gifts dozen or two best submissions and next action ran month or two later attracts 120% the number previous one did, word of gifts and possible response from social media make sure of that.

Whats in for, say, Lidl (large market store in EU), when it gives away stuff to guy who complained to them on twitter that he got diarrhea from expired pizza he bought at their place? It lets them save face, improve recognition of their brand and makes more people bring their feedback, allowing them find potential rotten apples within their chain.

For young peopple especially the fact that large brand @'s them on twitter/face/insta or elsewhere is enough to go nuts, go to store, buy crazy amount of brand's product and then stage some photo or clip alone or with friends. And then there are followers who mimic this in hopes of getting social fame as well.

I'll assume you're right, because you actually work with this.

A few questions on the Snapchat thing, if you don't mind: Aren't you just "buying" interaction with the prospect of a potential price? Does it actually increase sales figures significantly, long term and beyond the people that participated? Wouldn't the participant have been very likely to buy the product anyway? I mean they already follow the brand on Snapchat.

Their participation in activation usually makes some of their followers/friends to try their chances as well (or just buy it to see whats so great about it). Those people will try the product themselves and hopefully some will pick a liking for it and even recommend it further.

Social media is simply new channel in BTL and is important to Brands as they grow the awareness that there's increasing number of people that's simply oblivious to ATL.

As for sales figures, we actually work within targets, sometimes esoteric ones like "get hastag trending on specific day". We also rarely work alone, more often than not being just part of bigger picture happening simultanously. Brand then reviews performance using market research companies or sales figures and tell us results, so its hard to say if sales change would be same or different without us.

As for long term sales, that depends more on Brand's strategy and its reception by the market. Digital is part of this strategy's realisation, but due to nature of the medium, we are playing short game here.

For mainstream businesses who use branding style marketing; they're used to spending money without much measurable results. I work at a niche yet global business our best use case for Facebook is to be in our niche groups. Combined they're 8-10k users.. we wait for a mention of a issue with our product then fix it privately via messenger.. 90% of the time they get back on the public thread and praise us. It's absolutely priceless as a customer service channel for us.

I definitely agree here and haven't really thought about it, but I couldn't care in the slighest about big brands on Facebook, compared to local businesses where it helpful to e.g know when they run special offers in their store.

Agreed. There are some small businesses that will not even answer the phone anymore.. but try sending a facebook message.. almost instant reply.

I hate this, but the fact is that small business depend on that. Facebook almost took over the web for most of my friend circle. they spend their lives there and have difficulty in finding stuff when it's not showing up in facebook search.

And google does not help in some cases, try searching for a product information. the first page is mostly shopping garbage.

Does that work out for these small businesses? Since I'm not on Facebook, it would make them seem unresponsive to me, and I'd probably stop doing business with them. But even for my friends and family who are frequently on Facebook, almost none of them would think to talk to a local mom and pop shop on Facebook. They would just call. But I'm old, and so are my friends and family, so maybe we're the minority. How common is this?

^ This. I don't bother with McDonald's Facebook but the theatre round our town that's somehow still operating doesn't have a website, they just have Facebook and Twitter. To small businesses those social networks can be a Godsend. Solid web presence that's stable and gets their name out.

Not to mention you have a bad experience at a mom and pop and post about it on twitter, it WILL get resolved if the owner has even the slightest amount of sense.

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