Cost per impression is dirt cheap compared to Google and Bing. Heck yes, its the most cost effective way for us to market our business. Far better than any other medium. 2/3 of our business comes from word of mouth and 1/3 from Google, Bing and Facebook referrals. I have dumped all of our print media, except bus cards and flyers, nothing else needed. Look at how people find your website on Google Analytics, 60% of our customers are on a tablet or smartphone. Its happening.....now!

I was hesitant to answer this question, just as I also hesitate to answer it for our clients. As a program funded in part by federal tax funds, we are prohibited from paying for any kind of advertising; therefore, whether boosting FB posts was helpful as a marketing tool was something I really couldn't say with certainty.

However, at a national conference back in September, Facebook handed out some coupons for free advertising. This allowed us the opportunity to boost posts for a specific workshop we were planning for October. We set our demographics to reach a very targeted market, created a colorful, visual ad, and set a budget of $50 that would be paid for with 2 of the coupons. With that small budget we reached 10 times the # of people we normally reach with our average post, and doubled the # of attendees we had hoped to get for the workshop. There is no doubt in my mind that with careful planning and an eye-popping design, every small business owner could do the same. I'm now sharing that information with all my small business owner clients.

My answer is yes. The reason being is that Facebook has actually decreased your exposure just because they can as far as I'm concerned. I can make short work of my marketing efforts with paid posts. However... If I sell a product, I'd go straight to Pinterest Ads (which is slowly being rolled out to businesses). I've got ads running with them now on another business of mine and I've paid $5.59 for more than 11k impressions...

Quote "Facebook is free...and always will be" When you sign up for Facebook, that's what you see. There are lots of other ad mediums out there that I can pay for other than Facebook. If they want to start charging for my page followers to see my posts then I will take down my page and they won't have the opportunity to put ads on my business page like they do on my personal page, so they will probably lose money on the deal.

We have paid for advertising with some regularity over the past year or so. For us, I think it is helpful in reaching new potential clients to build awareness about our services but it has to be done strategically. For example, we ran a little contest in targeted area directly around our business and it ended up having great engagement which brought us an opportunity to speak at a local mom's group (our target market).

We are reevaluating all options now as twitter and instagram seem to bring a lot of fans, but more "sponsor me" requests than buyers. As each year passes and our product line develops as well as trying to fund raise for a short film , any recommendations would be appreciated as we run on a minus budget as we are growing our quality and inventory.

not anymore. I learned my lesson. Paying for posts may get you a few more followers, but they aren't necessarily a good client for your business. I had a streak of Iranian fans that all live in Iran. don't think they'll be calling me for a photo shoot in California anytime soon. There is lots evidence out there that have proven what a waste of money it really is. And the fact that I can't even reach my audience that has already liked my page is a major disappointment. You collect all these likes and even if you pay for a post, only a portion of them will see it. Its an average of only 11% of my followers see a post on any given day! Major scam, if you ask me.

We can NOT pay, as much as we'd love to advertise. This is often a problem for organizations that are funded by state and federal funds that prohibit paying for advertising. Facebook has been a Godsend for us .... but no longer.

Since we work with small businesses (some very small), and have encouraged our clients to use Facebook for visibility and marketing, we are now in a dilemma as to what to tell some of them. Those larger clients that actually have an advertising budget will be OK ..... the smaller Mom + Pop companies that are so important to our local communities may just be out of luck. We're now searching for viable options for these people, and our own organization as well. The answer may be as simple as developing a well-thought-out blog and posting there what you post on Facebook, actually competing with your own FB page. One more thing to do for these folks who already have full plates in running their businesses.

"The Facebook is free ... and always will be." promise became a moot point once the company was sold. No one is bound by a previous owner's promises; and every business has to make a profit, so that's understandable .... but for small companies that have depended on FB, this could be a death sentence.

You'll only get out what you put in. If you aren't active in building your content and interacting with potential new customers you won't get anything out of it. It's not like placing an ad in your local newspaper where you just sit back and wait for it to work. You have to be involved yourself in Facebook, the more involved the better. Join groups, chat with people, share your page. The more you work it, the better your results will be.

Do we really have a choice? Facebook is showing less than 12% of our posts to our existing friends, so forget about the public seeing much of what we post. Contrary, we have had good success gaining additional awareness and or actual business by boosting some of our posts - the ones that have very strong Calls to Action.