(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the weeks since Facebook’s IPO, the Zuckerberg-lead social network has been under intense scrutiny, with many expressing doubts as to the financial viability of Facebook’s revenue model, especially with regard to its advertising service. GM pulled their Facebook marketing campaign, and music industry e-commerce startup Limited Run made an impact with their claim that 80% of the clicks for their Facebook ads were made by bots (although the jury is still out on the accuracy of that complaint). A study from the Advertising Research Council claimed that “blank” ads with no content were performing only 0.1% less well than regular ads.

While this news is not good for Facebook’s future revenue, and businesses should think hard before spending their advertising budgets on Facebook’s paid ad platform, the real value of Facebook and social media generally was never through paid ads anyway. The true virtue of social media is not that it increases short-term conversion rates, but that it allows brands to build engagement and foster a community that can have a significant impact on revenue over the medium and long term. In this area, the future of Facebook is much more robust, and the indications are that social media proper, rather than paid ads on social media, are an excellent target for marketers.

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Customers are Ignoring You (Photo credit: ronploof)

It’s becoming increasingly clear that traditional advertising is not creating the levels of engagement that marketers might hope for. Consumers are conditioned to barely see banner advertising — assuming they haven’t installed an ad-blocker — and they are very sensitive and averse to content which they perceive to be biased towards selling. Content marketing is an alternative or complementary marketing method that aims to generate conversions in the long term by fostering brand loyalty and awareness, and demonstrating competence within a particular niche.

Content marketing is simply providing content, be it text, audio, video, or even apps, that is of value to  clients and customers. Content marketing makes businesses into publishers. This blog post is an example of content marketing.

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One of the major psychological foundations for the purported effectiveness of social media marketing is social proof. The idea is fairly simple: people are more likely to find a product or service appealing if there is evidence that other people find it desirable. Robert B. Cialdini, in his very popular Influence: Science and Practice, describes social proof as

an important means that people use to decide what to believe or how to act in a situation by looking at what other people are believing or doing.

We’re social animals, and signals from our peers as to the desirability of particular objects has a significant influence on whether we want them too. In social networking, this principle is put into practice through the pursuit of “likes” or “+1s”, and through an active pursuit of conspicuous evidence of engagement and approval for products and brands among consumers.

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