Facebook: How Can You Keep Hitting the Proverbial Moving Target?
In recent conversations with both friends and business colleagues, it’s become apparent that the patience of even longtime users is being dangerously strained as a result of Facebook’s frequent changes.
For small business owners like yourself, it’s especially taxing to stay on top of adapting your marketing strategies to the ever-moving Facebook target. So, how can you continue to maximize your time and marketing efforts on this social networking mega-giant? By letting the following 5 key points guide you on Facebook strategy decisions.
1) It’s important for most small businesses to have a facebook business presence, but remember you’re a squatter on Facebook’s virtual real estate. Understand and accept ahead of time that whatever time and money you spend to customize your page could be undone by future changes.
2) BECAUSE you’re a Facebook squatter, buy your own plot of cyberspace, namely a self-hosted website. Provide incentives to encourage your Facebook family to go to your website’s landing page and opt-in for something of value there. This lets you gather their contact info to generate your own list.
3) Focus your Facebook business page efforts on genuine engagement. It’s been reported over and over that after a person initially goes to your page and “likes” it, they don’t visit your actual page very often. Instead, they catch your activity on their news feed and/or ticker.
4) Let others figure out the changes for you. All you have to do is search for recent changes, and you’ll always find articles from other “experts” that distill the changes down for you. This saves a LOT of time and potential errors on your part. See the links below to give you a head start.
5) If the dynamic nature of Facebook (or other social platforms, for that matter) gets to be too much for you to keep up, consider hiring a social media professional to handle it for you. Most offer a la carte services in addition to larger projects for this very reason. If you don’t already have one in mind, contact us at Social Media Services, and we’ll be glad to help you. 
Are there other key points you keep at the forefront of your mind when making Facebook strategy decisions? Let us know by commenting below.
To your business success,
Becky, for Social Media Services
More About Facebook:
How Facebook Changes May Affect Your Small Business Page or Profile
Enough with the “Facebook is Free” Already
How to Move Your Facebook Tabs to Secure Hosting Required by Facebook
Image Credit: http://findicons.com/search/facebook
Becky – You’re right on, social media are moving targets! It definitely takes a lot of work to keep up and ensure that you are always doing what it takes in order to be seen and be heard.
Also, the importance of having a website and/or blog site is vital, I agree. I believe that a blog is “social media that you own”. Once you have people participating on your blog, you know that they are true fanatics of your company services.
Eric, I really like your comment that a blog is “social media you own.” Nothing like owning your own website/blogsite AND having a Facebook page as a “virtual website rental.”
[...] Eric Figgins My friend Becky Lam brings some some great points about how social media is a moving target. With any software or web service, you can expect updates and changes to break the “old way [...]
Good reminder, Eric. The breadth and depth of social media has expanded so much, it’s now gotten too much for small business owners to keep up with, unless that’s the niche their business is in. Even social media managers drink a LOT of coffee trying to keep up! LOL!