Facebook — and social media in general — has never been a sure thing for business users, but that doesn’t mean its popularity among entrepreneurs is weak. Even in the B2B realm, research released last year found that more than half of B2B sellers have considered using Facebook to reach corporate clients — surpassed only by the LinkedIn platform.
The company has worked towards building up its reputation among the enterprise, largely through its Facebook at Work initiative, and late last year, it secured one of its largest corporate clients to date: RBS.
This time, Facebook is targeting SMEs to boost its B2B strategy.
Reports by Fortune on Wednesday (March 2) said Facebook revealed its newest tool for small businesses: Your Business Story.
It’s a solution that helps the 50 million businesses that have Facebook pages to easily create a photo slideshow — adding some bells and whistles like music and text — to advertise its products and services.
According to reports, a video-inspired tool for businesses may not come as a surprise, especially as Facebook is reportedly in the running to try to dethrone Google-owned YouTube from its spot as video king on the Internet.
“Ads you see will be more diverse and more targeted to you,” said Facebook Vice President of Small Businesses Dan Levy in an interview with the publication. He added that SMEs make up the majority of the platform’s advertisers.
Facebook’s latest figures said users are watching 8 billion videos on the platform every day. That could be a major opportunity for businesses, 1.5 million of which already upload a video to the social media site every month, reports said.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, however, pointed out several months ago that the video play figure on Facebook could be exaggerated considering Facebook automatically plays videos as users scroll down their feeds.
It seems the digital video war is off and running, and Facebook’s latest strategy is to nab the business crowd. Reports said Facebook is already doing well in its B2B services, with 3 million firms paying to advertise on the site — a 50 percent increase from just a year ago, according to the company. Still, the company will not disclose how much small businesses are actually contributing to its multi-billion dollar ad earnings.
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