That's not the right take-away in my opinion. Facebook is terrible, large Facebook groups are killing the planet but digital advertising is a bajillion times cheaper and substantially more effective than much of the advertising options we've dealt with. Your hapless blogger's problem isn't advertising or Facebook. His issue is that he somehow thought that creating a Facebook group would give him a forum for his website. This is contrary to all available evidence: Facebook silos the shit out of their stuff, scrapes your content so that you can see it in a Facebook wrapper without ever leaving, and tags your readers like wildlife so that they can categorize them and market them to other people who understand what Facebook is useful for: increasing search rank and converting new customers. Those 14,000 members have zero reason to leave Facebook. There's people to argue with on Facebook, opinions to lodge on Facebook, memes to share on Facebook and hell to raise on Facebook that was never going to convert for him anyway. What was he looking for? Click-through? So that he can make money on ads? Facebook has a tight-as-a-drum ad network they control entirely, why on earth would they let their traffic go somewhere else to see someone else's ads? If he had a restaurant? Worth having a Facebook page. If he had a restaurant supply store? Worth having a Facebook page. They're about product. If what you have is a blog, though, why are you on Facebook at all? What's your revenue model anyway? Eater couldn't make money, they got absorbed by Vox. Vox can't make money with Eater, either. So now you're doing food reviews on Patreon? Prolly shoulda started there. Still kinda touch'n'go but I mean, Consumer Reports isn't exactly wealthy. Review sites aren't a profit center and expecting Facebook comments to get you there was optimistic.Here's a really interesting case-study in "Why Facebook is Terrible" and "Why Large Facebook Groups Are Killing The Planet" and "Why Digital Advertising Will Ruin You":
All good points, no arguments here! I will point out that in this case it’s a her blog.
It’s entirely food and restaurant based for the county I live in, written by a former food journalist who worked for a handful of newspapers over the years.