New Facebook Relationship Status

Why Facebook isn’t the business seductress it once was…

It’s not me it’s you.

I’ve always tried to make the most of your whimsical ways during our steamy affair. Recently though I’m starting to think you just don’t care any more. At the start you were all welcoming, chilled out and friendly; now you’re all “don’t do this”, “you can’t do that” and “don’t even bother me unless you’re rich”.  The fun has gone and being able to hang out with your 400 million friends just doesn’t seem to be worth putting up with your crap. So enough of your games, I’m making the rules now.

If this sounds like a break-up speech, it is, kind of. I almost feel like cutting ties with Facebook when they constantly change how business can be conducted on their Pages. However, I’m not about to deny how powerful a platform Facebook still currently is by cutting ties altogether.

BUT times are a changing. Facebook isn’t the one-stop-business promotion shop it was once lauded to be. Users face a growing list of Ts & Cs, running any sort of promotion is a minefield of regulations and it’s looks like soon only the big boys will be able to afford to do anything innovative on there from a marketing stand-point (Sam will post more about this here on iThnk soon).

More eggs, less basket

I’m going to reiterate a point I’ve made in posts before – don’t put all your social media eggs on one basket! If Facebook has turned into your go-to / default connection to the online community, if you’ve forgotten about Twitter, you can’t remember the last time you wrote a blog post, your YouTube channel was last updated in 2007, you don’t know what what the hell Flickr is and have asked who uses Foursqaure anyway; you’ve fallen into the Facebook trap!  That’s what they want, of course it is – imagine how much they will make in ad revenue when everyone is there all the time (I’ll give you a hint. It’s a lot).

The more popular Facebook becomes the more diluted your message gets and less effective as a business  communication tool anyway, right? Personally I think the juggernaut Facebook has become will continue to roll on, evolve and attract the masses; but I’m not convinced it will remain the viable primary point of contact that some businesses have come to rely on it as.

So I’m not breaking up with you totally Facebook, although I do think we should see other people. I’m changing our relationship status to “It’s Complicated”. You may not like this but I have to do what’s best for me. Maybe there will be a few more marriages on the rocks in the near future when companies realise you aren’t the be all and end all of social media marketing. We’ll see.

What do you think? Is Facebook still meeting all your needs as a promo tool? Or are you ready to flirt with some more attractive alternatives?

P.S Thanks to Diana Adams for providing some great inspiration to help me write this post!