Seven reasons you won’t catch me complaining about Facebook, or see me jumping ship to another social media platform…

 

Join me on Facebook :) 

Seven reasons you won’t catch me complaining about Facebook, or see me jumping ship to another social media platform…

If, like mine, your Facebook newsfeed is scattered daily with page owners feeling disheartened by the changes being made to the way business updates appear in your newsfeed, you might (also like me) be getting a teeny tiny bit fed up of the grumbling. Maybe? Just a bit? I am! It doesn’t mean that I don’t still love the beautiful things that the page owners make, or that I’m no longer interested in the brands I follow – I’m just tired of the moaning! Here’s why I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon…

1. I happily accept the generous freebie! The business service I get from Facebook – albeit diminishing a little each year – is free. It costs me nothing unless I opt-in to paid advertising. I use lots of digital services to help run my business – PayPal, a web host, and email client, banking, etc.etc. – and each of them charges me. Rightly so, too! We’re none of us in *business* to offer charity, and I’m cool with that.
2. I accept that things move on: times, they are a-changing! Okay, so Facebook used to offer us more, and its offering to business users has reduced over time, but that’s life! I’ve been running business pages on Facebook for almost five years now, and had a personal profile for about three years before that. In the beginning, almost everything I posted was seen by almost all of my page ‘fans’. How cool was that?! Thanks, Facebook, you got me off to a really good start! But – and here’s the thing – back in 2009, there were about 100,000 pages, posting an average of once every 15.7 days! Less than once a fortnight, I kid you not! This summer, Facebook estimated that approximately 30 million – THIRTY MILLION! – small enterprises were running Facebook pages, each posting an average of three times daily. Is it any wonder that photos of my latest cushion or my scatty ramblings are less likely to hit your newsfeed?! Would you really want to hear what I – along with every single other page you follow – have to say three times a day?
3. And you know, it’s my responsibility to engage my followers. If you see and like my posts, or photos of recent commissions, or snaps of my workspace, then you interact with me. If I’m boring, you scroll past. It’s really not rocket science, is it? Plus, the guys at Facebook also offer us some really fab information about our pages, called Insights. Insights can give a page owner loads of really useful statistics about which posts are most and least successful, and even what time of day our followers tend to be checking their newsfeed. We’re handed a really powerful business tool on a plate, and if we can’t be dynamic enough to roll with a few punches and adapt to a couple of rule changes, then tough luck! Seriously, I’d love for you all to see everything I post, but in the same way that I don’t see every single airing of an M&S television advertisement, it’s just not going to happen. It’s *my* responsibility to get *my* publicity seen by as many people as possible by posting lively, interesting, engaging and timely content, even if that means paying for advertisements to reach my followers. You know, like in the real world ;)
4. I like it in Facebookland, and I’ve made friends there! Over the last few years, the number of people who follow my page has increased steadily, and I really like those guys! Some of the people there are customers or even repeat customers, some are my own friends and family and some are just random lovelies who join in with the nonsense and say nice things about my work.  Do you know that this month, one lady saw a penguin hot water bottle in Asda, and told me she thought of my middley and his penguin obsession when she saw it?! How lovely is that? Someone I’ve never met, someone who lives inside my computer, thought of my son and pointed me towards a gift she knew he’d like! I’m not going anywhere, no sir, I’m staying right there on Facebook!
5. Which leads me to this: other social media platforms just don’t work for me. I’ve tried them all! Twitter is too fast-moving for my product. Almost everything I make is a unique commission, or has a heavy degree of personalisation, and my sales are generally driven through relationship-based marketing. I know it’s not really that nice to think that my Facebook interactions have a goal of sales, but ultimately I’m there for a business presence and happen to be making buddies and having fun along the way. Twitter moves too quickly for Hop Stitch Jump, and needs me to be succinct, which you might have noticed is not my strength. It’s a fantastic platform for driving traffic to your website, and perfect for impulse purchases. We didn’t get along that well. Instagram? Try as I might, I can’t take enough photos in a week to be successful there! Google+? Too few of my target market use it. LinkedIn? Too corporate networky! Tsū? Too new, not proven enough, I suspect it’s a flash in the pan, a knee-jerk reaction to Facebook’s changes. I’m not going anywhere, no sir, I’m staying right there on Facebook!
6. This social media lark can be really time-consuming. Of course, I could have a gentle presence in each of the major social media networks, but I fear I’d be spreading myself too thinly. Right now, Hop Stitch Jump works for me and my family by offering me masses of flexibility so that the top of my list when the children are awake is being there for them, and letting me work evenings and weekends. That won’t be for ever, though, and a more conventional, Monday to Friday full-time schedule is approaching faster than I’d like. When that time comes, and all of my children are in full-time school, I hope to get my evenings and weekends back to share with my family, not running five social media accounts! There might be a time that I can juggle them all, but that time has not yet come! There are some busy periods when I literally have to ignore my email inbox ping-pinging and my Facebook notifications ding-donging, because I would never get around to the important business of actually making! And finally...
7. Nobody wants to interact with a page that moans and grumbles all the time, right? I can hold my hand up to having 'unliked' a handful of pages over recent weeks, simply because I can't bear to hear any more complaining about how Facebook changes are going to ruin their business, or because they are are posting obvious gimmicks to encourage interaction almost daily. If I like the photos and stories that a page posts, I naturally interact, and therefore I keep seeing that page in my newsfeed. I could hazard a guess that I'm not the only unliker, and therefore, that there's something other than the changes in the pipeline that might be having a detrimental effect on Facebook reach. What do you think?

There is no getting away from the fact that Facebook - along with other social media platforms - is going to keep moving the goalposts and bending the rules. In fact, it's entirely their prerogative and we've all done well to get this far for free. Yes, it makes it difficult for business to keep abreast of the changes, and yes it can be a bit of a pain in the rear, but all successful businesses have to stay current in both real and virtual life. It *is* possible for page owners to reach more of their followers by either working hard to post engaging content or by paying to target posts more closely. Page owners are wrong to say they're being forced to put their hands in their pockets to make a success of a service that has so far been free. And in all honesty, if a business relies entirely on an one of the popular social media networks as the way to reach existing and potential customers, then Facebook making a few changes is least of their worries.

So there you have seven reasons that I'm staying put on Facebook for a while. How about you? Do you run a page and have a different take on the changes? Or if you only have a personal profile, how do you feel about Facebook changes streamlining your newsfeed? Will it change the way you interact with the pages you've chosen to follow? I'd love to hear...

Catherine x