[agaton]

I've worked a lot with PR, marketing and user acquisition methods for different startups the last couple of years and I can't agree with this article. My experience is the opposite, work with Facebook as much as you can, even if most of the "Likes" comes from friends.

There's two (combined) reasons for that:

1. It's really hard to acquire users. With or without budget, the most important part of a startups success is the ability to find and get onboard new users/customers. Facebook might only be one method of getting people sign up for your service but hey, it's one of the most effective ones. If 200 people click "Like" on the same day, of course it will go viral if it's a cool startup. Friends or not, it 's people and most of them have great networks of other people around them. People with many friends are more likely to succeed not only with your Facebook Page but with the business itself. Guess why? People know people, even if they're not themselves in the right target group. Get many people like you, and they'll like what you're doing (and their friends to, hint).

It's no rocket science, really. Facebook is very effective for marketing. Use it. Tips: start the page as fast as you can. Growing the amount of fans takes time, with many invited friends or not. If you get pre-launch press, use it for something. To have 200 FB fans when you launch for real are very valuable.

2. Retention. Facebook is great as a reminder to people. If you have many FB fans, you have many people to remind about your startups existence. Facebook is useful for getting long-time value of a initial interest/hype/launch. Actually more effective than newsletter subscriptions for some of the projects I'm involved in.