“I guess we need a Facebook page, I mean there really isn’t anything else is there?”

This is a direct quote from a client of mine as we discussed his social media marketing options. The truth is, there are other options out there but popularity-wise, traffic-wise, Facebook has become the “must have” social media strategy.

Hitwise (a company that tracks online marketing trends) reported on March 15, 2010 that “Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week.” And most of us realized a while ago that Facebook has blown MySpace right out of the water as far as traffic goes.

You could argue that there are much better, user friendly, more deeply niche social networking sites out there and you’re right. And according to what your niche business or interests are you should be on those alternate networks. But we’re talking pure numbers here only. Be on those other networks, but you better be on Facebook too. Bottom line? Right now, the most eyeballs on the web are on Facebook.

So if social media marketing is part of your strategy, Facebook is not only a logical part of it, it is a must. But there is a danger here that I urge you to consider: If you only do Facebook, I believe you’re setting yourself up for a loss.

Right Facebook is virtually free. If you have a page or pages on Facebook, right now you’re enjoying what basically amounts to free advertising. How long will Facebook allow this? There are new rumors everyday about soon having to pay for Facebook. They probably don’t mean personal profiles – but business, product and services pages? I think they will be the first to face a “pay a fee or get deleted” scenario.

Just rumors, that’s right. But if you pay attention to what happens on Facebook everyday – the little things, the little changes they think you won’t notice or won’t bother you too much because after all they are giving you this free advertising right? For instance, when you set up a page on Facebook – a page, not a profile – you used to be able to change the default landing screen to something other than the page’s wall. As an example, take a look at this page I created on Facebook for the site BornToPaddle.com:

When I created this page a few weeks ago, I set it to be the default landing screen. At the time, this was fine with Facebook. I recently created another page for a client’s business. Suddenly I could no longer set my custom page as the default landing screen. When I researched the issue I found that Facebook had changed the rules. Now, you can only change the default landing screen if your page has 10,000 fans or more…10,000!

Facebook is essentially telling small businesses – hey, you don’t typically buy paid advertising on our service so now you get less options. Only large businesses with huge followings can have these options because they are most likely paying for ads.

So what, I’m going to complain? I’m still getting my page for free – for now. Facebook is basically telling me and others like me that we just can’t have everything. Live with it. So what, I’m going to take down my pages in protest? How can I? Facebook has more traffic than Google! I have to stay with them to stay in the game.

And they know it.

Facebook is holding all the cards. They can do what they like. What marketers have to think about is this: If Facebook starts to charge for certain services, are we going to stay with them? Can we walk away or have we put all of our eggs in one basket and are now at the mercy of Facebook?

My advice: ride the wave while we have it. But keep a good presence on those smaller, niche social marketing outlets. Keep other forms of marketing in play such as email marketing, print marketing, blogging, ebooks, web sites, web ads, etc. Be prepared and don’t be surprised if the face of Facebook soon changes dramatically.