What a shock. About 60-70% of your marketing plan has just been made obsolete by Facebook’s changes. It’s not their fault. You are idiots to have ever believed them. The signs were always there. First they said “everyone make pages!” So you did. Some companies even forsake a website and make the Facebook page a main hub of activity. Now it sits there almost useless, collecting a few likes from your employees if you are lucky. Then they said “do video!” So you obeyed and pumped money, changed teams, bought equipment for that too. Guess what? Now they are saying video is no longer what they want. Less than a year later! You paid for special advisers, you paid for adverts, you went to training, listened to podcasts, followed the “developments”. What “developments”? Let’s face it. Nobody has a clue, they are just running after Facebook and paying for it. Those clever clogs that said “we will handle your social presence” just got royally screwed. They are now officially useless. And clueless.
I hate to say “I told you so” but, no actually, I love to remind you about it. From day 1 of it’s existence, I have written that Facebook is a scam. Mark Zuckerberg has the mentality of a hacker. Not the cute ones you see in films helping the hero by remotely opening doors and getting information about the enemy. No, Facebook is the largest organization ever built to perpetuate a completely selfish attitude to business which can be summarized as:
Grab what you can, when you can. Who cares about everyone else?
This sounds like a line from a film about Wall street and many would even justify it possibly. But not in the way Facebook implements it. Facebook systematically changes its rules and ecosystem to screw everyone else. It starts with the user. It’s only purpose is to keep you on the platform. It doesn’t offer anything useful, just a semblance of a real tool. Remember those? Real tools, like the ones in your CRM or your ERP. Things you actually do work with. While some idiots were getting excited and promoting Facebook groups as “better than old fashioned online forums”, people at Facebook were laughing, knowing it was just a scam. They had put it together in a couple of weeks and were already on their next thing. You were promoting a duck long dead.
The entire industry of Facebook watchers is now proposing workarounds. It is their way of not admitting the problem. “Stick to live video!” they say. Fantastic. Heck I work for a company that sells equipment for this, anything from a 5,000 euro small set up for a school or company to a 5 million studio for a TV channel, we can make a killing. Only it would be completely stupid to let you do it for Facebook. Of course you need a better plan, one that keeps the assets in your ecosystem and only uses Facebook as, when and if it is worth it. Until they change their minds again next week. “Turn to Messenger!” they say. “Use bots!” Sure guys, anything you say. Let’s all use an infantile messaging system with no decent API, no decent search and lacking all the great tools we know and love in serious tools for business. Business hasn’t changed. You still need a database with your data somewhere you can control. Something like a CMS, or a web front end or anything that won’t change next time Zuckerberg wakes up on the wrong side of his bed with a new best idea.
The only thing I will agree on with Facebook is the need for long comments and deep discussion. I am an excellent online troublemaker. Kicking up a fuss with long comments and causing a commotion is what I enjoy best in my free time online. So far I thought of it as a disadvantage, something to keep away from business accounts. But my time has come! Despite Facebook’s idiotic commenting technology which makes following an argument rather difficult, it seems the universe if finally in need of my natural calling.
If nobody is seeing that business page and nobody is commenting on your posts feel free to contact me for help. Oh by the way I just tripled my prices but you shouldn’t worry about that, after all Facebook is much worse. At least I am honestly telling you about it up front…