Don’t Be Social Media Stupid with Your Business

If you don’t own it, you and your business are at risk.  Years ago, my friend Kevin Mullett and I had this discussion and it’s true. Don’t Be Social Media Stupid with Your Business.

Let me explain.

Facebook is the world’s largest Social Media platform and they offer a multitude of ways for people like you and me to start a business, promote and grow a business, even become independently wealthy with a business that lives on Facebook.

The problem is if your business relies only on Facebook, you are eventually going to be hurt.

Facebook is your virtual landlord.  Except when you have a real landlord relationship, there are contracts that you read and sign.  Promises made by both parties and some guarantees for a period of time.

That’s not the way it works with Facebook or any of the other social media platforms.

Facebook can make changes and you have no say in the matter.

Does anyone remember reading the “Terms Of Service” when they signed up? Over 98% of us blindly just click on the checkbox without reading.

NBC news recently featured an article that included this story about a small business owner that relied on Facebook.

Holly Homer, an entrepreneur from Texas owns the Facebook pages for “Quirky Mama” and “Kids Activities.” With over 3 million followers, Homer’s Facebook page had become so popular she hired five employees and her husband quit his full-time medical job to help with the business. Homer showed NBC News a chart of interactions with her Facebook page that shows a decrease in February when Facebook implemented changes to News Feed.

As you can see, she was all-in when it came to running a Facebook based business. And that is where the problem lies. I did some of my own investigating and her Facebook page is Quirky Mama, but her website where she makes money is KidsActivities.com .  But Holly is using another short cut that echos the mistake she made with Facebook.  Her KidsActivities.com domain isn’t really her own website.  Sure she owns the domain, but it’s actually just a sub-website on the Maven domain.  Just like Facebook can change the rules, Maven can make changes and Holly will really be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

I know this is sounding technical, so let’s talk in everyday language.  When you lease a car, you don’t own that car.  There are some benefits to leasing over buying but because you never owned that car, the only value is the immediate value of having that car to use.  You can’t sell it, because you never bought it.

If your business is built on someone else’s platform, like Facebook or Maven, in Holly’s case, she and her entire company are at risk of losing it all.  Holly says:

One of the Facebook policy changes that kind of went under the radar and it went into effect in February was the branded content policy. And it decreased my income from Facebook by 60 percent, overnight. No explanation.

Facebook cares about Holly and doesn’t care about Holly. They walk the fine line of working for the greater good. Their priorities begin with #1, that’s Facebook itself. Second on their list is their stockholders and then we have the users.  Facebook users fall into multiple categories. There’s you and me as a couple of individuals in the total Facebook universe of over a billion active users.

Holly and her business fall into another category.  Facebook is free for you and me to use, but not so much if we are using Facebook to promote our business.  Holly and other businesses have to pay to get their Facebook posts seen by the masses. Same is true for any organization that Facebook believes has money to spend to promote their message.

In the summer of 2013, I ran the social media department for a $50 million dollar e-commerce company.  Our average sale was under $100, so we had a lot of customers to make up that $50 million each year. That summer, I saw Facebook make a change in their algorithm that reduced the number of people my Facebook post were reaching by 75%.  Fortunately, I knew what to do, move some of my budget around and spend a little more.

Facebook is constantly making changes. All you can do is figure out how to adapt.  But there is something else you really need to do too.

Own your own online presence. If your only online presence is a Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter handle, LinkedIn account, Snapchat account, or a free WordPress or Blogger website, prepare to lose it all.

That was part of the lesson I learned from my conversation with Kevin Mullett in 2011.  I had made a name for myself with a few marketing blogs that were hosted free on Google’s Blogger platform.  They are living there, you can find them if you Google ScLoHo.

However in 2011, I also bought my own domain and website hosting service for ScottHoward.me  It’s where all of my content lives.  I update every week still with a new story and article like this one.

Facebook and all the other social media platforms have a purpose still.  They are being used simply as a marketing tool, not a place to host a business.  Websites were around before social media.  A website without any publicity is not going to get any visitors.  Use social media as a tool to draw people to your website if you want, but please don’t confuse the two.

One more item from the 20 year old in my family, Jake.  He posted this on Facebook the other day:

Hey friends and fam ,
I will be deleting my Facebook account or at least the app because I have been really wanting to change my daily habits and my phone is not a good one .. so I will not be on here for at least a couple months but I hope each and every one of you continue to strive to be the best you can be each and every day.

Jake is Gen Z.  He’s in college.  He and others of his generation don’t care about or even trust Facebook anymore.  This is a another warning sign. I have advertising partners on WOWO Radio that use WOWO to drive traffic to their website.There are other ways besides social media to drive people to your website and we’ll talk about that soon.  In the meantime please remember this: If you don’t own it, you and your business are at risk.

Want help in figuring all this out and creating something more stable?  Let’s talk.