Facebook Events, in the relatively short time they’ve been around, have become a marketer’s new best friend. Companies use friend lists to target invitations, announce updates, and introduce new products. But although the system seems tailor-made for online marketing, it’s not foolproof: some companies still make costly mistakes that turn hordes of users away.
The most common blunder is event spamming—flooding users’ inboxes with event invitations and updates. Although it’s safe to assume that people on your list share your interests, that doesn’t mean they appreciate being sent ten Facebook reminders a day. Use your own preferences as a guide—take a product or service you like, and make an honest estimate of how often you want to receive their emails. For a relatively savvy user, a few times a week is usually acceptable. Of course, there’s also some market research involved; you want to know what your users’ lifestyles are and where daily emails fit into the typical schedule.
You also want to avoid putting people on multiple friend lists. Friend lists eliminate the need to click on one hundred names at a time, but it’s hard to control users. Many of them unknowingly put themselves in two lists that send them the same stuff, and this can be construed as spam—even if it’s not your fault. It’s good business practice to correct such slip-ups. Once in a while, verify your lists and weed out any duplicates.
Perhaps the most important thing in using Facebook Events is relevance—and that’s something even the most experienced professionals miss out on. It’s tempting to create an event for everything that happens in your company, as it shows up on the feeds of everyone who’s invited. But it can easily go the wrong way when you start posting every single update as an event. As a rule, create events only for actual events, such as a product launch or sale, that takes place somewhere your users are familiar with and where there’s a purpose to confirming their attendance (e.g. freebies for people who actually show up).
Facebook Events no doubt have their place in marketing, but like any other tool, they’re only as good as the people behind them. Use it to better target your message and reach more people with less effort, but back it up with market research—and put at least an equal amount of work in crafting good content that will keep people coming.


If you build it, they will come—except when you’re on the Internet. With well over a hundred million sites live, the competition is fierce among websites, blogs, and more recently, Facebook pages. Owners of these pages have to get more and more creative by the day if they want to stand out. The first thing you want to do once your page is up is to add content that will draw people in, and hopefully make them stay.
