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Ask anybody in the business and they will tell you yes. Well, anybody except us maybe… we will ask you a few questions first. And here they are:

1. The most important question is, are you going to spend the time to keep your Facebook page updated? Because there is nothing sadder than an empty Facebook page for a business. Why is this the most important question? Because if the answer is yes, you should probably have a Facebook page, depending upon the kind of business you have. If the answer is no, then you shouldn’t have a Facebook page. It’s as simple as that.

2. What kind of business do you have? If it’s a business with a lot of public interaction, like a restaurant, you need to make the time to keep it updated. It doesn’t take that much time. Find 20 minutes every Monday morning and you can do an acceptable job with Facebook. If you want to do better, post your specials, and recognize people you know that have visited your restaurant recently.

3. Do you have the kind of business that doesn’t need Facebook? Facebook success relies upon a business that attracts people who are interested in your products and services, but not ALL products and services. One of our clients is in the HVAC (heating and air) industry. They have done pretty well keeping their Facebook page updated with tips, specials and more. But after a year, they have less than twenty “Likes”. Why is that? It’s probably because the HVAC industry isn’t the kind of business that draws people to a social media page. The same thing would be true if you owned a funeral home, for example, or a  sewage treatment business.

4. Is your website business to business? If so, we generally do NOT recommend that you use Facebook, although there can certainly be exceptions.

OK, so what will happen if you don’t have a Facebook page? It might affect your Google ranking to a slight degree. Google won’t tell anybody exactly how they rank sites, but this is a common theory.

Also, a lot of website analysis measurements will grade your website somewhat lower, but that might not be a big deal. You see, those sites (like Marketing Grader) can be very useful for measuring the quality of websites. We use Marketing Grader a lot. But we always remember the type of business being graded when we consider the grade, because Marketing Grader only looks at specific benchmarks, files and links. And raw data like that doesn’t consider whether that data is relevant to the specific website being graded.

So here’s the bottom line: Facebook can be very useful for your business, IF it’s the kind of business that can take advantage of Facebook, and IF you can dedicate the time to utilize what Facebook has to offer. For most business, we recommend it, but for some specific businesses, don‘t waste your time. There, I said it.