Tag Archive - small business

Three Reasons Facebook is No Longer Fun

August 23, 2012 in Digital, Media with 0 Comments

By the River

By the River (Photo credit: urbanworkbench)

More and more, I am seeing how Mr. Zuckerburg might have missed the mark on his transparency mantra. Our lives are multifaceted. There is certainly a place for separation between these facets, especially one’s professional life and personal life. Not because we have something to hide personally, or professionally for that matter. But simply because in the new world of Facebook being used for business, our personal feeds are so polluted by messages that are “work” that they are no longer “fun”.

We live and work in an era of unprecedented connectivity. Many of us watch television with an iPad on our laps – viewing two screens simultaneously. And that same connectivity allows us freedom to work from anywhere and therefore at any time. This benefit brings a risk: the only way to shut down professionally could be to disconnect personally. Isn’t that sad?

I live on the opposite side of the world from my family and many of my friends. When I moved to Australia, Facebook was a wonderful way to share what I was up to, how my kids were growing, and to hear about the important and banal moments in their lives. And then the marketing started.

In order to promote my business, I need to be connected to a number of organisations, many of whom do most of their communicating through Facebook. And so I can only really log on for enjoyment if I’m also prepared to respond to work related things. And even though I own a small business, and I’m usually prepared to jump on a good opportunity, I’m old enough to know from experience that I’m no good to my business if I’m burnt out or unfocussed.

Here are the three problems I see with Facebook that have reduced how much I use it as a consumer:

1. Interlaced personal and business messages have made my timeline a scrolling marketing billboard.

Who doesn’t want some leisure time that is not trying to sell you something?

2. Requirement to be friends with someone before they can become an admin on your page.

Working virtually means that I don’t actually know some of these people, though they do a great job and are indispensible to my business.

3. Requirement to use Facebook as a business tool results in it moving to the list of things I only want to use with a professional hat on.

Meaning that I’d rather share my life somewhere else. I just don’t know what that somewhere else is yet.

And it seems that many of my “in real life” friends have noticed this too as the updates they post (or Facebook’s algorithm allows me to see) have reduced substantially over recent months. Yes, Facebook is a great tool with a phenomenal user base. No, Facebook is not going to thrive as the information superhighway’s billboard service that it has become.

Algorithmic tweaking is clearly focussed on that ever important number of how many posts we each see from any of the contributors to our newsfeed. Facebook is still thinking about their customer, but that customer is no longer each of us as a person, it is the businesses they need to pay  for ads and feed Wall Street.

If you have a solution for keeping it fun, please share it in the comments. 

Where’s My Team?

April 12, 2012 in Digital, Lessons from Oola with 0 Comments

Where's My Team

photo credit www.muehlemann.com

Whew! It is been a whirlwind month of activity. And while I enjoy the same ups, downs, and daily lessons of every small business owner, I’ve recently been longing for the teams of talented people I’ve led in the past.

Even as a manager who was happy to muck in when there were “all hands on deck” tasks that needed doing, it’s been a tricky transition going from relying on a large department to provide ideas, know how and energy to embracing that a small business life means Continue Reading…

Is Facebook Boosting Pre-IPO Revenue?

February 24, 2012 in Digital with 0 Comments

My morning Facebook fix alerted me to this post by Facebook Marketing Solutions, emphasis mine:

I have been experimenting with the page post ad over the past two weeks and for some posts, it can have a great benefit at extending reach and awareness. The social feature on Facebook ads is cool, fairly clever and impactful. However, as I build up my fan base from essentially a standing start – I should pass 100 likes today! – I am not expecting to have to ‘re-acquire’ each of those fans in order for them to see my content.

Clearly, it is in any company’s interest to promote their business and drive revenue. The irony here is that Facebook’s employees (see the About section highlighted above) are coming right out and saying that Facebook will require you to advertise to your likers. I will probably run an experiment over the weekend to determine whether this results in a lower CPC to target existing page likes, though I’m not impressed at the idea of siphoning off my acquisition marketing budget to direct at retention of prospects who may not even have become customers yet.

With my Digital Media Strategist hat on, it seems obvious that Facebook is trying to push advertisers, especially smaller businesses who rely on Facebook for much of their traffic, to spend more on Facebook. And the timing is not by accident. Facebook gets to announce a surge in Advertising revenues just ahead of IPO day, even more investors clamour for shares, the already anticipated biggest IPO on record exceeds expectations, and Facebook is laughing all the way to the bank.

With my Small Business Owner hat on, Facebook might be becoming an increasingly less cost effective channel. Don’t worry yet, with 800 million prospects, we’re still going to use the platform. However, as soon as you throw additional obstacles in front of entrepreneurs, we simply innovate and work around them. Likers stop becoming a direct communication channel, so we shift them to email or a blog. I realise that it’s one thing for me to write this in my own blog post and an entirely separate thing to do it. But if you think we won’t figure it out, think again!

Just like Twitter, Facebook is a place where we offer up discussions about issues, teasers about our products, services and specials, and address customer service queries. If our likers stop seeing our posts, we’ll have to reach them another way. On the flip side, if a page post ad on Facebook is the most cost effective, no doubt we’ll use it.

I am pleased that Facebook is thinking like a public company already. It will hopefully make advertising on Facebook easier (future post on this coming).

Let us know how you use Facebook for your business in the comments.

A Personal Lesson in Online Privacy

May 21, 2011 in Australian Digital, Digital, Media with 0 Comments

Are we ever too old to learn from our parents?

When I started work at AOL more than a decade ago, I often grinned at the common product question which was asked – would your parents be able to use this?  In nearly all cases, mine would, but then my parents have proven to be early adopters of technology even before the internet (except for one small blip when the compact disc was invented which will live on in family lore for a long, long time).  Because of this, I listened attentively when on a recent visit both of my parents asked me a number of probing questions about what they could and could not trust online, including using their email address to subscribe to this blog.

Imagine, my own parents nervous about what kind of mailing list they would end up on as a result of subscribing to their daughter’s blog.  This was startling and mildly alarming to me as someone who relies for my livelihood on people exchanging their information (not just email, but often credit card details to make a purchase) for a product or service that I provide.

So today in my news round up over my morning coffee, I’ve come across this article in the LA Times:

Facebook executive warns senators that restrictive privacy rules could squelch benefits of social Web | Technology | Los Angeles Times.

It is just one of many covering the privacy legislation introduced by Sen. Kerry.  My normal response would be the same as Facebook’s CTO – let the innovators in the industry get on with figuring out a commercial solution.  In effect, “trust us, we won’t abuse our customers“.  Well, I still believe that most of us won’t abuse our customers.  And in fact, I will always be a consumer advocate in any digital business I am involved with.  However, I am not sure that we as an industry have earned the trust of the people, and therefore their government.  This statement is true not just for the US, but also for European and Australia markets where governments are equally concerned with privacy and trying to determine how to legislate protection.

I definitely do not want to push for this legislation because the likelihood of governments to really understand the issue and the ramifications of their laws is low.  Digital privacy is a complex area with some stellar experts working in the space around the world.  My wish is that all businesses could act responsibly and respectfully when using and sharing consumer data.  More laws, more lawsuits, and more compliance is sure to dampen innovation, especially for individual entrepreneurs and small businesses.

On the other hand, something must change so that my parents once again feel comfortable surrendering their email address to me via my blog.  How can we help legislators understand all sides of this issue?