Facebook. The Unfriendly Unsocial Media Giant.
This week my blog is actually about social media, and the role that various platforms can play in helping a business grow. As many of you know for the last 5 years we have given away freebies on Wednesdays through Facebook on a #Winitwednesy giveaway. We started to do this to raise awareness about our brand and shop, and to get our products out into the world, it was a great way to let people see the quality of our scarves. As the years have gone by our #winitwednesday giveaways have become ever popular with thousands of people entering from all over the UK. We have been thrilled with the impact and have built a bit of a following on the back of the back of the giveaways. Heck, we have even inspired other local businesses to copy the idea and run giveaways. It was all good, people were enjoying entering and some were sticking around to follow our business and even place orders. Then last month it all changed. Facebook no longer likes our giveaways. Facebook started to remove our posts. The posts literally just vanish- like a magicians card tick, one minuet the giveaway is there with a few hundred people having entered, then the next it’s gone. Vanished. Poof, and your post has gone. Initially I was angry and a bit upset – I contacted Facebook who denied having removed the post. (Interestingly 24 hours later the post magically reappeared) I asked them specifically is there content you don’t like in the post, as I don’t want to make this mistake again. They said no. From then on our posts have been carefully designed not to ask for likes or shares, as we know this is something that Facebook might not like. We have clear rules about entry. It made no difference. Then two weeks later another giveaway post vanishes. This has happened now happened repeatedly for about a month. I haven’t got time to email Facebook every time it happens, as funnily enough, I am pretty busy running the shops. Besides experience tells me, they will know nothing about it… So the upshot of this is that we wont be running giveaways on Faceboook anymore. Which is really sad for the people who are on Facebook and enjoyed entering. This clamp down might affect our reach on Facebook and possibly some sales. However the people who will really be effected,and possibly upset will be the people using Facebook who enjoy the giveaways. I suspect they will find another social media platform to join in giveaways. In terms of our response as a business well, its one less thing to have to manage and remember to do. We will continue to run giveaways on Twitter @MagpiesNestLtd and on Instagram @MagpiesNest until we cant do that anymore:) In a week where big companies like Wetherspoons have pulled out of social media http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43781281 and in light of the whole Cambridge Analytica farse https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/26/the-cambridge-analytica-files-the-story-so-far
It really makes you ponder – is this the beginning of the end for certain social media? I have to be honest as a busy business owner I would love to be brave enough to be like Whetherspoons to pull the plug on the lot – you have no idea how much time social media takes up from your days!! However right now I am not feeling that brave.. so we will stick with it and encourage our page fans to try some other media platforms such as Twitter & Instagram, two social media platforms that are a little more friendly to users.
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Image used from FBtutorial.com