

Facebook pages are worthless for your startup. Go where the early adopters are. - g0atbutt
http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/16/facebook-pages-are-worthless-for-your-startup-go-where-the-early-adopters-are/

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mkull
Be careful here, you are talking in absolutes.

If you are b2c you should definitely take a close look at facebook as a part
of your marketing strategy. No, not for your friends / family but so you can
pay for targeted facebooks ads to show to your potential customers to get them
to like your page.

My startup now has over 35,000 'likes' on our facebook page, all in our target
demo / market. This is huge. We now have a captive audience we can market to.
I would put this just as high as building an email list and consistently
marketing to that list.

YES it drives revenue, and more importantly awareness.

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silverbax88
I'm impressed. Can you share how, or what kind of response those likes give
you? Do you post updates regularly and see visible results?

~~~
mkull
We post when we have relevant content, which typically is a mix of new
products / sales (we are eCommerce) as well as 'interesting' on topic content
(funny videos, blog posts, etc from across the web). We also run contents like
'caption this picture' which are very popular

We see a good amount of likes and comments back and forth amongst the customer
base, and as mentioned before it drives traffic to our website as well and
keeps our 'brand' top of mind.

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agaton
I've worked a lot with PR, marketing and user acquisition methods for
different startups the last couple of years and I can't agree with this
article. My experience is the opposite, work with Facebook as much as you can,
even if most of the "Likes" comes from friends.

There's two (combined) reasons for that:

1\. It's really hard to acquire users. With or without budget, the most
important part of a startups success is the ability to find and get onboard
new users/customers. Facebook might only be one method of getting people sign
up for your service but hey, it's one of the most effective ones. If 200
people click "Like" on the same day, of course it will go viral if it's a cool
startup. Friends or not, it 's people and most of them have great networks of
other people around them. People with many friends are more likely to succeed
not only with your Facebook Page but with the business itself. Guess why?
People know people, even if they're not themselves in the right target group.
Get many people like you, and they'll like what you're doing (and their
friends to, _hint_ ).

It's no rocket science, really. Facebook is very effective for marketing. Use
it. Tips: start the page as fast as you can. Growing the amount of fans takes
time, with many invited friends or not. If you get pre-launch press, use it
for something. To have 200 FB fans when you launch for real are very valuable.

2\. Retention. Facebook is great as a reminder to people. If you have many FB
fans, you have many people to remind about your startups existence. Facebook
is useful for getting long-time value of a initial interest/hype/launch.
Actually more effective than newsletter subscriptions for some of the projects
I'm involved in.

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mayank
Just a general comment about the site: I love your logo and headline styling,
but why is the body text so unreadable? I know I can just ctrl+ it, but it
seems that if you're building a better TechCrunch content-wise, why not shoot
for better readability [reference intended] of the actual content? The
emphasis looks like links and the graphic takes up a lot of room for an
element that doesn't add anything.

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g0atbutt
Thanks for the feedback mayank. I'll get this fixed.

~~~
tblancpain
agreed. something like 12pt/1.65 for .post-content works much better.

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WillyF
My Facebook page allows me to broadcast content to my fans. That's valuable.

I've found that it's not all that effective when I'm promoting content that my
readers get through my e-mails, RSS, or website, but it's actually really
great when I'm promoting a sponsor (I'm in the employment space). I can
usually send some extra clicks to my sponsor, and that makes the campaign look
better.

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rcavezza
Most startups need to focus where their market is. If you're in B2B or focused
on selling something to startups, you need to be on Twitter.

If you're more of a general consumer product, you should be on facebook, but
not on a fan page, you should be trying to get users to "Share" your content.

Fan Pages can be a good way to communicate with existing customers or blog
visitors, but it's not really an acquisition mechanism.

~~~
rudiger
B2B startups need to be on Twitter?

Based on my experience with B2B, you don't even need a _website_.

~~~
scrrr
Rüdiger, yor nick sounds like you're from Germany. Care to chat? If yes, email
me pls (see profile).

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mattholling
Your points about your Facebook network of friends not being your target
market is many times true, and something I had not thought about. Good insight
Paul.

~~~
g0atbutt
Actually this post was written by Robbie Abed, one of our new writers.

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bpeters
You should not just focus on twitter, but leverage community sites like HN.
Also, social media is just one ends to a mean. There is always the good old
fashion hustle in the streets to get that initial traction.

~~~
g0atbutt
Absolutely. Twitter helps to cultivate relationships, but meeting people in
real life is where it's at. Twitter is a great tool to make that happen.

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junkfruit
Great article - makes sense for many businesses, but not all. Getting your
friends on Facebook could be very valuable if your friends ARE your target
customers.

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kirbman89
I am with the author. I deactivated my FB account back in December. I don't
trust friend's opinions and don't trust facebook to securely store personal
data of mine or prospective users. Before adding the pretty bells and
whistles, make sure your site attacts users and works correctly before wasting
valuable design time.

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malloreon
What about early adopters who "like" your site, come to your fanpage, and get
their friends to check it out?

