Lately I’ve been trying to figure out Facebook. Yes, I realize I sound like your grandma. Be quiet and clean your plate.

I’m relatively new to Facebook, having created my page late last year, and only doing so at the suggestion of my boss, Irma, who has probably spent many a night wondering how she could have hired someone so social media-averse to handle her business’s social media.

 

[caption id=”attachment_2214” align=”aligncenter” width=”496”]Is Facebook Still Worth the Hassle for Small Businesses? Oh, stock images. You never disappoint.[/caption]

 

The Thing About Facebook

The thing about Facebook, which you know, is that in order to run a page for your business, you have to tie it to a personal account. Which sucks.

The other thing about Facebook, which you probably also know, is how wonky its algorithms are. Meaning, you can post all day, err day, and there’s no guarantee anyone will see your updates.

For a small business owner relying on Facebook to get the word out to customers about sales, deals or other general info, this really sucks.

Algorithm Nation

The reason for all this algorithm wonkiness is that Facebook wants you to buy ads. Which is fair. Facebook is a free service, so paying for the opportunity to promote your business isn’t really asking too much.

But even if you’re paying for ads, there’s no real guarantee anyone will pay attention to your content, as I’ve recently found out.

I’ve been testing paid ads for the last few weeks and have found … well, not much. I’ve yet to find the magic formula — image, text, offer — that brings all the boys to the yard. So to speak.

It’s an ongoing effort to find ways to reach people with our Facebook content, both organically and through paid ads. And I’m not the only one dealing with this struggle.

 

[caption id=”attachment_2216” align=”aligncenter” width=”580”]Is Facebook Still Worth the Hassle for Small Businesses? OMG, how creepy is this picture? It has nothing to do with this post, I just wanted to include it because it scares the crap out of me. (via PC World)[/caption]

Gaming the FB System

In a recent post, Mashable asked 8 small business owners to share how they game the Facebook system.

I was hoping to see a magic bullet answer among the responses, something I hadn’t thought of, but the suggestions were all things we’ve been doing: creating better content, asking co-workers to help out with engagement, using other social networks like Twitter and Pinterest, putting all our eggs in the email marketing basket…

It’s becoming increasingly clear there isn’t one guaranteed magic, unicorn-dusted way to drive business through Facebook. The choice seems to come down to constant tweaking and testing of both content and ads, or giving up on Facebook altogether and putting effort into other avenues.

What do you think? Is Facebook still worth the hassle for small businesses? What’s a better alternative? (Please don’t say Google Plus.)