Facebook has become the website of choice online today. With over 600 million users and growing day-by-day this Internet juggernaut provides a tremendous marketing opportunity for all types of business ventures worldwide. From the smallest home based business to the largest multi-national corporation Facebook offers an unprecedented potential for reaching a massive audience in one online location.
Although the advantages offered by this Internet entity are well documented there’s also a downside associated with utilizing this web based vehicle for your Internet marketing strategy. This editorial will explore 4 such potentially destructive results for your business as a result of using this social media giant as part of your Internet advertising plan.
1. First and foremost the potential of having your website hacked or broken into and of having all of your personal and business information stolen is a very real concern. Because of the large numbers of people who log-on to this web page on a daily basis the task of preventing hackers from accessing your data is impossible.
If someone were to use your Facebook page to steal personal information and or business documents Facebook may shut your business page down while they investigate the situation. This is a big risk to take while they try to determine who was responsible for this intrusion because time is money and this would pose the potential for a big set back for your enterprise.
2. Any advertising campaign you create for Facebook has to be geared specifically toward its users because often times traditional offline marketing doesn’t translate well to their patrons. Many companies found this to be the case when they initially began using this social media website because these people seem to be much more relaxed and informal they don’t respond well to the more traditional offline, formal approach to marketing.
If you’re more accustomed to advertising on radio, TV or in the print media you would have to change your strategy and make it a more relaxed and laid back policy in order to succeed with these online prospects.
3. Another problem, more for larger corporations than smaller ventures, is having a Facebook business page through which you give employees access to sensitive company documents.
This opens up another potentially disastrous situation because these employees can very easily share this information with people on the outside of the company therefore undermining the organization’s security. This may put the business at risk because the competition could easily access sensitive data which may undermine the company’s standing in the business community.
4. Because of Facebook’s growing popularity and the massive market it represents the competition from rival businesses will be nothing short of intense. For this reason you should be prepared to target a niche market which isn’t in the advertising lime light or which is being virtually ignored by other organizations on the web.
In order to succeed with your Internet marketing campaign using this social media phenomenon it may be necessary to reinvent your home business by moving from niche to niche while profiting the most from each while you can before moving on to the next opportunity.
With Facebook approaching, or perhaps having achieved, the status as the most popular website in Internet history it would be folly to ignore this online marketing opportunity for your home based business. Even though there are negative aspects these are far outweighed by the positive attributes of this social media mogul.