Chris Sunkin is on Facebook tutoring Emeril how to cook on the outdoor grill, while throttling his 47 Apache with his toes. Such a showoff, that Chris.

Awesome! Are you like in IT or something???? You're super-duper smart! I have a computer running windows 3.1 and it keeps asking for my credit card number... I type it in everytime then it takes me to some Russian man on man gay porn site. I mean, its ok and all, but not my cup of tea. Windows 3.1 is still pretty cool but the thing about everything being in Russian is upsetting. I wish that I could understand what is being said. Can you fix it???

Your not right! :lolhit:

My friend TomTom tells me that too. Says only dummies use Windows 3.1. He says I should have upgraded to a 3.11 like last year...

And he's like totally the smartest dude I know...

Doesn't say a lot for the company I keep.

It is a great tool to get things out there. Were else can you click and button and it go to 1000s of people? Between all the junk on there it's an easy way to spread the news.

Matt there is a lot of times I read the speed on the water write ups from Facebook rather then here. It's a tool that has changed lots in the way things are done.

I get that everyone is not going to love social media. There is a lot of positives that come from it though. Especially boating related! I am friends with every powerboat club in the country, many of the boat racers, and all the poker runs. I love it!! People like Hammer Down Boating are killin it on Facebook. We also contribute some of the success of The Buffalo Poker Run to the ability to market to a much wider audience for pennies a day. It is a way to promote our sponsors for free. I hate to say it but the times they are a changing. If you don't like it that's cool but it is a highly effective way to communicate with people who share an interest.

It's not just a Facebook thing, it's the beauty of internet anonymity. Many(most) people believe that their opinion or what they believe to be fact as they way it is, and they lose all respect for others when relaying their message.

Don't believe me? Start a camshaft post on this site! :D

You can't afford my advice.
And I probably can't afford your service work either.

Casey, that's a great data point and one I confirm every time I review speedonthewater's Google analytics. During any 30-day period, referral traffic from our Facebook page is several thousand more visits higher than our referral traffic from all five message boards we use (with gracious permission from their owners) to distribute our content combined. That's huge. And it didn't use to be that way.

Hope this isn't boring you guys, but we also use Facebook to post items that are too short for and need to go live even faster than they can on speedonthewater.com. Example: Last years's Key West Worlds. I think we pulled 20-plus news stories out of there—and a digital magazine feature. But we must have posted more than 100 tiny bits of stuff on our Facebook page in the four days we were there.

Last, one mistake I see a lot of people falling into: Using Facebook as the primary page for your business. I get it. It's cheap—free. But Facebook lacks the content management and page layout flexibility for the most rudimentary business. As a platform for your own business, it's too limited.

Facebook is, from where we stand, a marketing tool with great potential. Or it can be a steaming pile of crap. It's all how you use it.

Matt,
I see your point with the limited aspect of FB but your data showing traffic on your own articles contradicts the importance of a website. Let's face it. Aside from messge boards who goes to websites anymore for anything? People no longer crave flashy websites and want soundbites....blips of frequent information. In addition to that they want it force fed to them. This is the result of FB and Twitter. They want to look at their feed, read things of interest that pop up, then move on.

Or.....maybe I missed your point all together :whistle:

Well, if you look at speedonthewater.com for just a second you'll understand that I buy into the notion of quick and easy information delivery. But the Facebook interface wouldn't work for speedonthewater.com, just as it doesn't work for most businesses.

I agree that websites don't need to be flashy. I helped start boats.com in 2000. I say that for no other reason that I've seen every trend come and go. In 1999 to 2000, (call it Internet 1.0) we were all about making websites "deep" ... until we found out that after two clicks people were done. Again, to my point and yours, look at speedonthewater.com. Then look at CNN or another mainstream news site. The similarity you'll note is that you can see EVERYTHING at a glance. For a content site, Facebook is completely inadequate. And I contend (and you disagree, which is fine) that it is completely inadequate for any business as its primary website.

Check out the Mystic Powerboats site. Or the revamped Cigarette site. Simple, simple, simple, anything but "flashy." Both of those sites, Cigarette in particular, see a ton of traffic. Neither of their presentations would translate to Facebook. (Frankly, I was being kind when I called it limited.)

Yes, Facebook is free and we (speedonthewater.com) love it for certain goals such as driving referral traffic (that's where you're getting messed up with my data) and doing quick hit, one line, one photo stuff that would be stupid on speedonthewater.com. But—and I know people hate to hear this—you get what you pay for and, again in my view, Facebook is adequate for just about any business. These days, you can get a simple site with Joomla or WordPress content management built for a song. Monthly hosting fees are about the same as a tip on a two-pitcher bar tab. And you have more control. And you could train your pet chimp to run Joomla or WordPress.

It doesn't have to be fancy, red/white, I do agree with you. It does have to be effective.

I have to ask: On what information are you basing your statement, phrased as a question, that no one goes to websites anymore for information?

Final thought regarding Twitter: Unless you're a celebrity, it's worthless—and we use it, our Facebook posts automatically go directly to our Twitter feed. But what benefits does Twitter actually provide? We've yet to see any.

I don't have a depth of data on webpage interaction. Just observations of my usage of the internet and those around me. In my own experience my family business drives far more "views" from our content on FB than we do with our webpage. FB also gives us the ability to drive our names on to the FB feed and keep our name in front of our aduience. Our webpage can only be bookmarked and will only get views if people are inquiring about us or our line of work. I can see your point for Speed on the Water. Being a site heavly driven by articles it would be tough to present all that material in a concise format on FB. It's the same with the other sites you mention. The volume of content can not be supported by FB that is involved with those sites. But, as a rule, exposure and repition are the keys to a sucessful business model. Promotion is king....even over product. FB is a proactive tool to promotion and allows a business to push it's name and mission to a mass of population much as the same way TV and radio adds do. Websites are passive and rely on action by the consumer to be a useful tool.

Good points, very good points. And I do suppose, softening an earlier position, that it does depend on the business to some degree.

Something else worth noting: In using Facebook for the home page of your business, you lose some of your own brand identity. You become "that business with a Facebook page." The plus side—for Facebook—is that your business, under all their headers and design, enhances their brand. The plus side for you is you have an instant audience and a free website. For most businesses, I simply don't believe the tradeoff is worth it.

Great discussion.

Wow. Y'all are way too technical. I have a page that pops up in mine called rack of the day. That alone is worth checking it out. Haha