A reader (name withheld by request…) learns the hard way:
I saw this email today and it struck a nerve. My wife had a complete mental collapse from the corporate pressure she experienced in the pharma world. Sadly it has become an common problem in that world. It took a long time to recover from that and we realized going back to that environment with any company was not a viable option. She had to find something else and it had to be able to replace a large portion of her previous income. Thankfully we had time because of our large savings account.
My goal was for her to find something she was genuinely passionate about. It did take long for her to find that passion. Now the path was one not one neither of us expected but she was happy and that was the point. She used Facebook
lives to do makeup looks and explain why people should use her chemical free, gluten free, cruelty free professional grade makeup line. Over time it became this group of women that viewed it as sisterhood. It became for some their escape, support system and a positive place for them to go every day.To the point of your article below, Facebook made change after change. The number of people on her lives dropped dramatically. People who followed her where not getting notification that she was live. She would get kicked off her live if she asked people to share it. The list goes on and on. These events have a direct impact on her ability to grow her business and her monthly paycheck. Some months it had a significant impact on her paycheck. It has become a constant battle to figure how to manage the everchanging rules of Facebook. It is incredibly frustrating to thousands of people.
There are hundreds of thousands of people and probably millions that use Facebook in the same manner to provide there livelihood. In my wife’s case it has become so bad that she started looking for another platform to utilize. The problem is the interaction that she has with people is what makes her successful. If she simple did a video and posted it the results would barely register. Forgive the long email but I wanted to share the story to provide perspective for this question.
Is there a way to create a platform that allows you to do interactive real time sessions that you own and control? The power of Facebook is the millions of people that view it everyday and any one of them could stumble across her page and become a customer. In fact they do and that’s part of the reason why her business has grown.
This is what happens when you rely on another platform.
People on social media would be much better off doing this, instead:
1. Build an email list using the social media platform of your choice while you can
2. Then sell, interact, whatever to that list
Problem solved — if you know how to use email, at least.
Especially since, if you have a Facebook following, that ain’t a list.
That’s simply a table at a convention with people walking by who may or may not buy, may or may not interact, may or may not even see your table… where the convention owner can, at his pleasure, shut your table down, shuffle you somewhere out of view, even ban you from the convention center altogether.
Knowing that, use that convention to build a list while you can.
Then, once they’re on your list, you can email them at will, send them to a place where you can interact, do whatever.
And, there ain’t a blessed thing Flakebook can do about it after that.
My prediction:
A whole lot of businesses are going to be in for one rude awakening as Flakebook cracks down even more on the de-platforming, shadow banning (whatever the kids are calling it), mining personal data, and making it even more unpredictable to make sales and build an audience on there than it is now.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
After reading this, any evil that befalls your business due to over-reliance on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc makes you not an innocent victim, but a willing victim.
In the meantime, check out:
Ben Settle
