In the world of internet marketing, having a successful Facebook page has become one of the key metrics. Besides being easy to track, maintain and update, social media gurus have a wealth of tools readily available to generate endless pages of numbers to justify a brand’s investment online.

Facebook has stressed that they will never charge money to access their site, be it for your personal page, or a business/brand page. But just how much does it cost to create a Facebook page in the first place? We have a few Facebook pages and we’re glad that it didn’t cost a cent to develop, apart from some people’s basic monthly salary. However, according to local alternative news sites like Malaysiakini and Free Malaysia Today, it costs close to RM300,000 (pictured above).

From Free Malaysia Today:

Close to RM1.8 million has been spent to create six Tourism Malaysia Facebook applications, the Dewan Rakyat was told today. Deputy Tourism Minister James Dawos Mamit said that each application cost RM293,072 to develop, or RM1,758,432 in full.

The applications in question are:

1. Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia
2. Citrawarna 1Malaysia
3. Karnival Jualan Mega 1Malaysia and Karnival Jualan Akhir Tahun
4. Festival Pelancongan Seni Kontemporari 1Malaysia
5. Kempen 1Malaysia Bersih, 1Malaysia
6. Fabulous Food 1Malaysia

Of course, the above mentioned articles also made it known that the Facebook fan page of DAP (Malaysian opposition party) cost absolutely nothing to “build”, but we’re not interested to discuss the politics of the articles here. What we do want to know though, is how the company managed to derive that rate. The story also goes on to mention that one of the applications – Citrawarna 1Malaysia – had successfully garnered a total of 20292 likes. At a rough calculation of RM14 per like, it sounds like a whole lot of money to spend on internet marketing.

The discussion is currently a hot topic on Twitter and we spotted Text 100′s APAC Social Media Practice Lead, David Lian, saying that “although the price was steep, it wasn’t exorbitant”. He went on to suggest how the cost could be broken down (image on right).

What really boils our nerves though is how the pages actually turned out. For RM300k a pop, one would have at least expected something well designed, but instead the pages look more like Flickr streams than anything else.

Blogger and internet market Xinch pointed out and illustrated this fact well by listing out three simple ways these investments could have turned out better: a better welcome tab, giving people a reason to “like” you, and actually sharing content that is of value to your readers.

SOURCE via Lowyat.NET