What is your Facebook business page for?
This is a pretty straight forward question that seems to pull in a vast difference in answers and opinions, once it even elicited a “dunno”. But typically the answers revolve around something like “engagement” or “like building” or ”increasing exposure.” It is also typical that these responses reflect how the person answering the question has been groomed by their own media consumption; their business savvy (or lack thereof) and who their latest guru du jour is. Sadly, [Read more...]
Despite what social media purist would like to think, social media channels are marketing and advertising platforms, and they became so when their founders moved them from being college projects into money making (?) businesses that sell consumer data and advertising space; hence the comment from Facebook spokesman Brandon McCormick: ”Our focus is on building the advertising business, which we think is the bigger opportunity.” 
Often you will see social media posts and commentaries that wax on about the things you need to do in order for your social media to be effective. It’s usually a laundry list of strategies, insights and tips to help you push your social efforts over the edge of a marketing ROI. The list might look something like this: 
I actually started writing this post back in February as Facebook began unfolding its latest “upgrades” but I thought I would wait to see how things shook out. Unfortunately time has not improved my perspective. As I have said before in this blog, Facebook is out to make money for Facebook, that is understandable. But that also must be kept in perspective when building and formulating an online marketing plan for your business, because their desire for earnings might work against your own. I am also not advocating that your business not be involved in Facebook, but that you should fully understand the implications of Facebook’s m.o. before you sink your business completely into its fold. 
Quite often you see (and hear) that you should be listening before you jump into the social media fray. But it seems that rarely are you told how to listen and what you should be listening for before you make the leap. This post isn’t about engagement, strategy, influence searching or any of that. Simply, what we have found, is that when clients get all caught up in the so called metrics of listening they seem to forget that they should simply be listening first and foremost. For this post think Zen: shut up and just listen. If your mind is on other things, you’re just pretending to listen and not really listening. All the rest of it will come later. (Just listening is actually a more intense precursor to real engagement.) 
