As Bloomberg News reported Thursday, Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) shares are at a record high with mobile ad potential driving investor interest. But is Facebook really doing that well?
Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, offered a contrasting view about Facebook’s prospects at the “Mission Possible” social marketing summit event taking place in Raleigh. The third annual event, which opened Wednesday, is being put on by Raleigh-based Expion, a social media software firm.
According to a blog from the event written by Heather Satterfield, Tobin said one Facebook tactic – “paid social,” i.e. compensating Facebook “likes” and support from users.
Tobin presented data supporting “earned social” – or “likes” from people doing so because they really feel that way – is much more effective.
Facebook has several problems, Satterfield quoted Tobin as saying.
“First off, there’s a waning consumer interest in Facebook in general, and in particular it’s losing traction amongst teens to other social platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. He also said that fan growth is down, sharing that across the top 50 Facebook brand pages fan growth has fallen by over 12% since 2010 – it was 18% in 2010, but only 3.7% in 2012,” Satterfield wrote.
“The biggest issue though, is that while brands spent $5.7B on Facebook advertising in 2012, paid social is not proving to be as effective as earned social. Supporting the premise, only 36% of people trust social ads whereas 92% of people trust recommendations from other people – which is what the value of a social network brings.”
The full blog can be read online.
More about the Mission Possible event is available as well.
