There has been a lot of talk about the death of Facebook. The relevance and the reach of Facebook has been question for some time now, especially when it comes to marketing for businesses. While these concerns are very real for Facebook (and threaten the long term sustainability of the company), this does not mean that Facebook is completely out of the question when it comes to structuring your online marketing strategy.

Instead of looking at trends and predicting the demise of the social media platform (which has been discussed too much in my opinion), let’s look at and focus on the benefits that it brings.

People Are There

Even as Facebook usage time wanes, Facebook has approximately 250 million people logging in each day. Where most of these the usage time is falling is with teenagers. How does drop offs in teen site usage effect the current marketing potential of Facebook? Unless your target audience is in fact teenagers, the number of teen utilizing Facebook matters little in the short term. Usage statistics like this is something that is really catchy for a news article, but matters little in terms of marketing.

Connections and Engagement

I had a friend that recently got off of Facebook, in favor of Google+. He has had a lot of trouble due to missing out on significant moments in his friend’s lives. First, he has missed out on news of my engagement. Most recently, he missed the announcement of the birth of our college friend’s baby. Facebook has created an almost “second life” online, a platform that is seriously hard to not be on. Facebook’s user base is so large that it is  impossible to ignore.

Recommendations and Reviews

With such a large user base, businesses can connect with real customers and see them become advocates for the business’ services. By creating content and properly positioning it will produce results (we have seen it too, see the image to the right). What is really interesting about this example is how a customer shared the business profile with a friend. As of right now, no other platform has the potential for this (Google+ has nowhere near the user base).

While it is lacking in a lot of ways (and could be doomed in the years to come), Facebook is an important social media platform for businesses to look at and be engaging in.

By: Erik