Is Social Media Worth It for Your Business? Part 1: Facebook
Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers — and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.
Is Facebook Worth It for Your Business?
Let’s be honest about how most business owners feel about Facebook right now.
Somewhere between mildly guilty and quietly relieved. Guilty because you know you probably should be doing something with it. Relieved because, increasingly, it feels like permission to stop trying.
Everyone seems to have written it off. It’s the platform your parents use. Organic reach died years ago. The young people have left. It’s all ads and algorithms and content that disappeared into a void the moment you posted it.
That’s the story. And like most stories, it’s partly true and partly a convenient excuse not to think harder about it.
What Facebook actually is now
Facebook has changed significantly, and it helps to see it clearly rather than through the lens of what it used to be.
It is no longer a platform where you post content and your followers reliably see it. Organic reach on Facebook Pages has declined sharply over the past decade and continues to fall. If you’re still running a business Page and posting content into it with no paid support, you are largely talking to yourself. That part of the story is true.
But Facebook is also, still, the most widely used social media platform in the UK. Not among teenagers, you’re right about that. But among adults aged 35 and over, Facebook remains the dominant platform. Two thirds of UK adults use it regularly. And if you’re running a business that sells to people over 35, or to local communities, or to families, or to anyone who makes purchasing decisions that involve more than a moment’s thought, those are still your people, and they are still there.
The platform has also quietly shifted its centre of gravity away from Pages and towards Groups. That’s the part most businesses have missed.
The Groups opportunity most businesses are ignoring
Facebook Groups are a different proposition entirely from Pages. Where a Page is essentially a broadcast channel that increasingly requires paid amplification to be seen, a Group is a community. Content shared within Groups gets significantly higher organic reach than Page content. Members receive notifications. Conversations happen. People come back.
The businesses getting the most out of Facebook right now aren’t the ones posting on their Page three times a week. They’re the ones running, contributing to, or genuinely participating in Groups relevant to their customers.
This could mean running your own Group – a space for customers, clients, or a niche audience you serve. It could mean becoming an active, genuinely helpful presence in existing Groups where your target clients spend time. Not to promote, but to contribute. To answer questions. To demonstrate expertise. In the same way that showing up consistently at a networking event builds reputation over time, showing up consistently in the right Group builds something similar – just in a digital space.
It takes time. It requires you to give more than you take. And it only works if the Group’s audience genuinely overlaps with yours. But for the businesses that get this right, Facebook remains one of the most effective community-building tools available, and it costs nothing but consistency.
What about Facebook advertising?
Facebook and Instagram advertising – they share the same Meta infrastructure – can be extremely effective for SMEs, with one important condition: you need to know what you’re doing, or work with someone who does.
The targeting capability is genuinely impressive. You can reach people by age, location, interests, life stage, and a dozen other parameters. For local businesses, service businesses targeting specific demographics, or anyone selling something with strong visual appeal, the audience is there and the tools exist to reach them efficiently.
But running Facebook ads badly is an effective way to spend money and learn very little. Without a clear objective, a properly structured campaign, and enough budget to generate meaningful data, the results are rarely worth the investment. If you’re considering Facebook ads, the question isn’t whether the platform can deliver, it often can, but whether you have the expertise in-house or the budget to bring it in.
The honest question to ask yourself
Before you decide whether Facebook is worth your time, there’s one question that cuts through most of the noise:
How old are your best customers?
If the answer is under 30, Facebook probably isn’t your primary channel. If the answer is 35 to 65, it almost certainly still is, even if the way you show up there needs to look different from how it looked five years ago.
The second question is:
Do I sell something that benefits from community, conversation, or local presence?
Services businesses, local retailers, and businesses that thrive on word of mouth and relationships tend to find real value in Facebook Groups. Businesses selling to a broad national audience, or to a younger demographic, or whose customers make fast, low-consideration purchases, may find their time better spent elsewhere.
A final thought
Facebook isn’t what it was.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not useful.
For the right business, with the right audience, it can still be a valuable part of how you stay visible and connected, particularly if community is part of how your business grows.
The key is not whether you should be on Facebook. It’s whether it makes sense for you.
If you’re trying to work out which platforms are actually worth your time – and what to do with them – that’s exactly the kind of question I work through with business owners in Oxfordshire every day.
I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. If you’d like a conversation about where your business should be showing up, I’d love to hear from you – please get in touch via vicky@getaheadva.com.
Next in the series: Is Pinterest Worth It for Your Business?
