I have seen major advertising success on Facebook and equally terrifying failures. I recommend Facebook advertising to my clients ONLY as a test. If it hits, great, if not RUN. And then there is the pesky question of Facebook provided analytics. We have seen them change up and down for the same time period, leading us to believe that they are completely unreliable.
But beyond businesses buying Facebook ads, there is the question of whether or not to participate in social activity on Facebook: Where is the measurable ROI? A company can sink time and money and time and money and eventually maybe something happens, but no one is ever really sure. Gee, sounds familiar doesn’t it? We’re back to the good old days of Public Relations!
But in this modern age of being able to “measure everything” it is time for Facebook to cough up some basic information that would allow businesses to make educated judgments as to whether to spend time and money with the Facebook product. Here is my wish list:
- Percentage of FB users who are actually active at anyone time
- Percentage of FB users who are actually active: log on at least once a week
- Levels of engagement: How many users are adding at least 10 new friends a week How many users are posting more than once a week? more than twice a week? daily? multiple times a day?
- Levels of engagement by demographic: Here is where it gets down and dirty: who is doing what when? what markets are REALLY and TRULY using Facebook.
These are simple questions for that Facebook can easily provide data. Not detailed personal data, but meta data – in the same way that print publishing historically provided circulation data.
This is not too much to ask.
