Twofacedbook: Many Are Being Deceived by the Two Sides of Facebook

To the superficial observer, Facebook may simply be seen as a social black hole, a place where people waste time playing games or updating their "friends" on life's minutia-what was eaten that morning, the deer just seen on the front lawn, or the annoying construction going on next door. But there is a good reason why on March 10 th , 2010 Facebook overtook Google as the most trafficked website in the USA.

However, traffic alone, as the non-initiate knows, is not the key to the survival of most websites. Anybody who knows anything about marketing on the Internet knows that survival is based on monetizing traffic. The majority of websites cannot survive on mere hits alone.

And sure, Facebook is certainly monetizing its traffic, but it's also making money via other means such as advertising and games (usually played by the more socially inclined users). So, more specifically, let's get into why Facebook achieved its number one ranking.

It has done so by being the easiest, cheapest, fastest way to get an "avalanche of traffic to your website" (Robert Grant, marketing guru and creator of Crowd Conversion). This is the main attraction for marketers. And as any knowledgeable marketer knows, targeted, convertible traffic is the key to any marketing campaign. Another reason for its success is that Facebook is a breath of fresh air replacing methods that are costly, complex, and difficult to control. And the more marketers are able to monetize traffic, the more money they will spend on advertising. But you don't necessarily have to spend money to get customers on Facebook, and that's where the "cheap" comes into play.

To give you a little background, Internet marketers have tried to get people to their websites using several methods over the years: pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization, article marketing, email marketing or drip-marketing, and, more recently, social media (mostly blogs and social networking-Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Skyrocket, etc.)

However, the cost of Pay-per-click campaigns (based on keyword searches that bring people to associated ads) have gone through the roof in recent years; search engine optimization is an art that takes a considerable investment in time, and if you contract the work out-since it's so complex-you stand a good chance of being ripped off; article marketing is time consuming with its spinning (turning one article into hundreds by "spinning" or varying the language) and difficult to master; and capturing opt-in email leads to build a list to send targeted emails via an auto-responder (setting up a series of emails to be automatically released over an extended period of time through a service, like, for example, that which Awebber provides) has lost its effect, the open rate dropping below ten percent. Personally, I've tried them all, except for pay-per-click, a certain cost prohibitive method for the majority of startups.

But there is another point to consider, the fact that interruption advertising (television, radio, magazine, even movies with their unwanted commercials) has lost its effect. Fewer and fewer people buy from advertisers that interrupt their reading, listening, viewing, or Internet experience. People have been over-advertised to. They've become jaded and hard to reach. So what's a poor marketer to do?

The answer?

Relationship marketing, the soft-sell of first connecting or building a relationship, providing value, answering questions, and then guiding the prospect to a product or service and converting said prospect to not only a temporary customer but to a client for life. And it is through social media, specifically Facebook, that this connection has been found to be solidified and lasting, more so than through most other means. Facebook is fast, inexpensive, and easy to use. The general public still needs products and services, but they don't want to be "sold to." They need to trust and then buy. The sociability of Facebook provides this opportunity.

But there are other "social" means of connecting to people, but they have become problematic. Considering the top social networking competitors are in decline, MySpace (many cancelling or ignoring their accounts and going to Facebook; interacting not as social as Facebook with its multi-user posting stream) and Twitter (not response friendly with its 140 character limitation, the need to learn Tweetspeak abbreviations, Tweeting / re-Tweeting, 15% of accounts doing 80% of the Tweeting, etc.), Facebook has come forward as a very user-friendly application.

However, some may feel even feel limited by Facebook's 420 character status-update box, but hey, this is social networking-emphasis on "social." If you want to ramble on, go write an article or a book. But any savvy Facebook user knows that if you've got a little more to say, post your 420 character message and then continue by putting the remainder of the post in the comment area below.

But the key is to keep things short. For examples, one of the most popular types of posts on Facebook is quotes which are usually brief and concise.

But some may say, "Gee, I post but everybody ignores me." First, get over yourself. There's a lot of posting going on. Second, make connections, be sincere and be giving, and consider that it takes a little bit of time to build connections. These are people not machines.

Personally, I have over 1,130 friends. One of my new friends-a speaker, author, entrepreneur-stated that I am "the most connected person" he knows, having seen my name appear as connected to dozens of people he's reached out to befriend in recent weeks. And as a marketer, this is what you want. But it takes time and persistence and a plan to get it done. Also, I haven't been at it long, and in recent weeks more people are coming to me to be added than me going out to find friends to add. In the process, I've made hundreds of great connections. You just have to be social and not a raging dogmatic egomaniac. But there's more here than meets the marketing eye.

There is a greater social connection to people and movements that would have a limited fan base if not for Facebook. There are thousands, millions who are looking to make this world a better place by encouraging and lifting others in some capacity. Some of these people and groups may be for profit, but often that's not the main focus of those looking to move the masses to betterment.

But for marketers (regardless of motivation), with 54% of Internet users on Facebook, 400 millions users logging in an average of 55 minutes per day, there is no better place to be. And for those who not only understand this but know how to convert all that potential traffic into sales, the outcome is a goldmine.

However, Facebook wasn't always the potential profit machine many marketers now see it as. Until 2006, it was basically a place where students converged to socialize. According to Ted Vinzani, author of "The Two Faces of Facebook", that year it was opened to "people other than students." However, Vinzani makes a key point, one that Google may wish were not true, "without changes to make it a profit producer, [it] would probably have died by now." And Facebook is certainly a profit producer.

Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, is worth an estimated $4 billion, even though some sources report his worth to be considerably higher. Facebook has outgunned Google for a reason--because of its monetization efforts. And keep in mind that Facebook is still in its relative infancy. According to Vinzani, "people are only now starting to realize the number of ways they can use Facebook to make money."

A good number of adult users have come online since 2006 (when Facebook opened up) and are using it merely to connect to old friends, family, or play one or, often times, several of the many Zynga games offered, but the vast majority of adults have come to monetize, contrary to the few nave and uninformed who believe Facebook in total to be a waste of time. But even for teenagers and the non-profit college crowd, it's just as cool if not cooler than text messaging; for most of the younger crowd, the greater sociability is just the thing they desire.

And even though most of the younger generation would never corrupt their experience with advertising and buying products and services on Facebook, as they mature and taking care of family, the mortgage, and retirement moves out of the rear vision mirror to front and center, the opportunity for Facebook to grow even more is tremendous.

Personally, I've marketed to the college crowd for some time with nary a response, having to rework my marketing plan. So I concur with Vinzani who has discovered that the younger market is not one to monetize, at least through Facebook at this time.

But for those who only use it as a social media, they never see the greater potential lying underneath. To market there are several options; one can use a Fan Page with unlimited friend potential (Facebook allows only 5,000 friends on personal pages), create or participate in niche specific Groups, go to the Marketplace which is like a classified or ad section, or use Facebook Newsfeed giving your posts wide exposure by syndicating, like an RSS feed. There's a lot more than meets the eye upon initial glance.

So whether you use Facebook to socialize or monetize or to get your ideas out to a greater number, there's no getting around the fact that "Facebook has smacked' Google Hard and now owns Google in advertising . . . and they are just warming up" (Charlotte Maxwell, Internet marketer) and that "Facebook just kicked Google's butt and trying to ignore Facebook is about as stupid as trying to ignore Google" (Russell Brunson, youthful, multi-millionaire online marketer).

So whatever you use it for, it is the king of the Cyber Highway at the moment, and there's no getting around it.