Small Businesses and Facebook

Is Facebook a good or a bad thing for small businesses?

Contemporary Readings in Law & Social Justice.  2014, Vol. 6 Issue 2, p122-129. 8p. 3 Graphs.

Here, I have found a paper which studies a number of small businesses to determine to what extent they are utilising social networking and if so, for what purpose. 

We all know that most people have a Facebook account these days, some are used more than others and everyone uses their account for different reasons. Some to keep in touch with family and friends, others use it as a way to advertise their business, there are endless different ways to use Facebook to your advantage. 

Social networking is the practice of expanding the number of one’s business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. While social networking has gone on almost as long as societies themselves have existed, the unparalleled potential of the Internet to promote such connections is only now being fully recognized and exploited, through Web-based groups established for that purpose. (Whatis.com 2011)

This paper outlines the way that social networking is growing and becoming one of the most useful ways to advertise your company online. Many businesses create a Facebook presence because it’s free, easy to navigate and allows people to have easy access to your companies products. As research here has shown, businesses find having a Facebook page even more useful than a website, which is much more complicated to set up and costs more also. Research has also shown that that the fastest demographic among Facebook users is that of those aged 55+, meaning that businesses using Facebook can really reach a wide range of people.

Externally (with connections outside the company) social networking can aid in branding a community, provision of technical support and a series of professional and social contact opportunities; internally it can assist in col- laboration on a project or across the organization, discussion and provision of information and instant messaging (Paul, 2009). Paul suggests that net- works like Facebook and LinkedIn can be used for marketing, recruitment, prospecting, and brand enhancement. In a similar vein Wallace (2007) sug- gested the key areas are around branding, linking to the business site, attracting traffic, interaction with the public and networking opportunities. People post a great deal of personal information on social network sites (De Souza and Dick 2009) – this can be used for targeted advertising. The costs can be significantly lower than paying for advertizing too (Mize, 2007). In addition, many think of the users of social networks as the young, however all age groups are now using the internet and all it has to offer (Raptis and Dick, 2005).

There are, however, some downsides such as lack of control over what is posted, the possibility of loss of content and social networking behaviour changes with the audience and demographic. Also, with it being so easy to leave reviews for the world to see, businesses reputations can be ruined within minutes because of one bad review being spread to all potential customers. There is also a chance that said review may not even be true, or could be somebody trying to get something for free by complaining! From personal experience, I’ve seen businesses grow overnight through using Facebook and others, sadly, be ran into the ground by people spreading one bad experience. It goes without saying that although it has it’s advantages, it also has a lot of disadvantages too. 

However it seems clear that most small businesses see the need for an internet presence in the form of social networking. It seems they are invest- ing in setting up these sites and making a reasonable effort to keep them current and informative. However, by and large, they are using only a small portion of what social networking has to offer business. It is not a case of “build it and they will come” – in order to exploit the potential of this technology small business will need to become much more interactive and proactive.

I think that Facebook is a great thing for small businesses, and those included in this study all seemed to think so too. As explained above, it isn’t just a case of creating an account and expecting business to fly in, you have to maintain the page and keep it up to date, you have to post regularly to keep customers interested and most of it is down to you yourself, not Facebook. If you treat your customers correctly and never do anything negative to jeopardise your business then Facebook is a great tool to use. However, with this comes the downside of it being very easy for anyone to set up a page and call it a business, even if their intentions are to scam people. The good thing about it, though, is that if somebody is to scam people, the review system and with how easy it is to spread the word makes it even harder for false or bad businesses to function.