New Study Suggests Using Facebook for Business Promotion May be Ineffective… We Suggest Otherwise

November 11th, 2010 by Search Influence Alumni

A recent study conducted by software and website training company Intellimon has revealed some fairly eye-opening findings about the use of social media in traffic generation for online businesses. They surveyed over 4,000 online business owners earlier this year and the results surprised everyone, including those conducting the study.

67% of those surveyed utilize Facebook to promote their business. Of those, only 29% said the platform is an effective means of driving traffic to their site. Similarly, of those businesses using Twitter, only 27.2% found it effective.

While these statistics alone seem jarring, when looking deeper into the study it begins to make a bit of sense. 70.1% of businesses operate on a part-time basis only. Not just that, but the vast majority of work is only done by one person, most likely the business owner. This includes a whopping 88.2% of them taking on traffic generation, with only 1.7% outsourcing the work.

These numbers highlight the importance of hiring a professional online marketing company to handle traffic generation, especially by way of social media. I’d like to see which of these businesses even have a spend budget for Facebook advertising. These numbers are in direct conflict with the great success we’ve had in using paid ads and contests to drive fans and traffic. Here’s some proof from one of our clients:

And that’s just from the past 30 days. So next time you think about running social media campaigns on your own, think again. It can save you a lot of time and, more importantly, a lot of money.

You can download the study here.