False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

The platforms themselves also benefit from 
and contribute to the social media myth.
Have you ever “liked” a company on Facebook? 
Probably, but did you ever buy their products 
because they were well represented on 
Facebook? Probably not. So why on earth do 
companies think social media is a good way to 
sell their products?
To answer this question, we should learn a bit 
about these platforms.
Social media platforms profit from traffic. For 
example, the more traffic Facebook receives, the 
more money they can ultimately charge for ads 
on their site. In fact, advertising comprises 85 
percent of Facebook’s revenue.
Consequently, your presence on Facebook 
benefits Facebook more than you – you put in 
the work for a professional page while they 
benefit from the traffic. Rather than going to your 
homepage off Facebook, your fans and 
customers land on your Facebook page, thus 
generating traffic – and therefore ad revenue – 
for Zuckerberg.
And it costs money to maintain your ad 
campaign; that content doesn’t generate itself, 
and no one works for free. Wouldn’t you have 
gotten more out of that traffic if users had simply 
gone to your own homepage?
Because they directly benefit from your 
presence on their sites, it is only logical that 
social media platforms themselves would help 
spread the myth that they are a useful channel 
of promotion.
Facebook, for instance, actively promotes the 
idea that their site is a useful channel for 
promotion. They once released a study claiming 
that the Kia motor company’s Facebook 

---

presence 
had 
increased 
their 
success, 
measuring such things as “awareness” and 
“perception.”
People believe this growing awareness and 
perception translates into more sales – however, 
it’s difficult to measure what effects actually 
resulted from Kia’s Facebook presence: Did 
anyone actually buy a Kia because they saw 
them on Facebook?
Social media platforms want us to believe that 
“likes” mean “sales” and that followers are 
equivalent to faithful customers; however, there 
is simply no way of knowing how many sales 
actually result from social media presence – if 
any.