@malachandra I slightly agree. In my personal opinion, being social is different than being dealer. Even if you have good fan base and if you enjoy great response on social platform, it doesn’t mean your storefront will have loads of leads. But again, it depends on the type and size of transaction people need to carry on. As you said, this is somewhat true for small bizz in compare to corporate giants and brands.  

i havent  seen it  work   very  well in  my  world….  but  it  can sure lead to  linking onto a  website…i see that working  for    a lot of sellers… to order online   you  want to  be  pretty  sure how it works  and im  not thinking  facebook  would  be  good at that …

I think, for the most part a lot of businesses have used facebook as a “funnel” to their business , brand, or website.  I think this is one of the reasons (no the only one, but one of) why facebook didnt like the default landing tab… and especially some cases, where fan pages were redirects to websites.  I have still seen some landing pages where it is just an big ad image with a link through to the company’s website… So, the mentality is there that facebook is just a “funnel” because, thats where the people are.

I think, this mindset needs to change (and it may change with the introduction of the new timeline).  I see that facebook wants to encourage us to the “social” aspect of everything.  Including business.  Its actually try to change the way we “do” business and it seems to be having an effect.  The message is this: “Make your business more social or you will miss out”.  So, I see businesses giving in to this mentality and going along with it… However, I see something else: Not all business are social, and dont want to be social.  Also, not all businesses have to be “social”, in particular, the businesses that sell products may not necessarily want to be “social”.

So, I see the way forward as being this: 

1. Make your business more social somehow – I have no clue how because we’re all different… and spend a lot of your time talking to people (which you would normally charge for i.e. your time) and maybe at the end of it all you could get 1000 fans and maybe 10 customers…. (worth weighing this up).

2. Try to use facebook as a funnel – Still valid, just a bit harder to do, and maybe the best option still.

3. Forget social – and take the risk that it doesnt really matter

I also see that what is important is mobile marketing.  No one seems to be talking about this enough.  Approx 50% of websites are now viewed on mobile and I’d say over 70% of them are non-viewable…  So, this is something that needs to be done if you have a website (in my opinion, more than being “social”) otherwise, people visiting your website will leave, because they cant see it properly and half the objects on the page dont load…

My advice:

Keep up, yes…. but do it with minimal effort and energy as possible. 

Im going to experiment with something over the next month.  Im going to iframe my local business website and some of my local clients into an app page, just to see what happens.

The idea is to put the website “inside” facebook where people trust it, and add some viral buttons to it (Like, tweet etc)

I have just finished building an app to do this, it will be ready in a few days if you want to see, but it will be interesting to see how it goes.

@vincentedwards, I am interested in learning how your experiment goes. Thanks.

@vincentedwards Thanks, On Skype? My id is justip123

@malachandra there a couple of technical issues with selling on Facebook the major problem is that PayPal will not work in Iframes so it poses a problem for the storefront to keep their buyers on Facebook and engaged with their brand.The one thing that does work on both levels, social and selling, is Classified ads there are a multitude of these groups on Facebook the seem to engage from 400 to over 5000 members and that’s just in one specific town, and I see a number of businesses advertising their brand through these groups. mayby worth looking into or if there isn’t one in your town,City start one.
@malachandra @vincentedwards  we have been working on a major project for Facebook to have a complete tabbed website on Facebook with all the trimmings, we are going to give 10  business a sneak preview of it next week before the launch, if your interested in this type of idea… PM me through these groups 
Best Regards
Alf 

@hildaalanisgonzalez  Can you send me a page link? thanks

I’m using Payvment – shopping mall on FB. I get hits on that tab, but so far have not sold a thing. I only put up items we have in stock in our store (nothing that needs to be special ordered) so as items go to out-of-stock status, I’ll just take them down and not replace them.
@vincentedwards

@hildaalanisgonzalez  Thats pretty cool.  I like things that are nice and tidy.  p.s. I’ve almost finished my zoomframe system I’ll keep everyone posted once its done.

@marylarson, Mary, you can connect your Amazon account to your FB business page as I did with ebay, so FB fans can have direct access to your amazon products, it’s not like a link (you can see it as “SHOP” option, you still stay in the FB page, but if you decide to buy something, then when you click on the specific product you are transfer to the amazon site.

it’s easy, you don’t have to do anything, just accept the application. You can read more of this here:

https://apps.facebook.com/easysocialshop/?source=Store106808326014111

@marylarson , your welcome Mary, I saw you did it!