How NOT to do business on Facebook
About two or three months ago Facebook changed its Pages format, so that business Pages look more like personal pages. This is a great thing, and I posted about the change in a previous post, Facebook Changes, good for business. However, in my own personal Facebook world I’ve been noticing some offenders of poor Facebook business etiquette. Because my Facebook world is more personal to me, I find myself getting surprisingly irritated with these offenders. My tolerance for blatant business promotion is dramatically lower when I’m in my Facebook haven.
The main offender that I’m talking about is a restaurant I am a fan of. Because I am a fan of the restaurant, their Facebook updates show up in my newsfeed. I have essentially given them permission to invade my personal Facebook newsfeed. That was nice of me, wasn’t it? Well, now this restaurant insists upon posting only one thing – blatant promotions. Every single status update says almost the identical message “come visit our beautiful space…blah blah” No specials are announced, nothing interesting beyond the fact that they have a restaurant, and I should go there. Well I already knew the restaurant existed. I became a fan of them so that I could possibly know a more personal side of the establishment, get information about exclusive specials and to learn interesting things about it. So, my main beef with the way that some people do business on Facebook is being generic and lazy. If you want to advertise, pay for Facebook advertising. If you want to be in my Facebook feed, then please contribute something more than promotion. It may take a little creativity, but I guarantee it will pay dividends more than the same status update every day. Actually, if you don’t give me something to enjoy, then I might just remove you from my pages list.
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Very well put (and constructive). It’s sad that so many businesses confuse social networking with “free” media. Socializing online – just like in life – requires an investment of time and genuine interest in other folks. You made a very relevant reason for their lack of etiquette: laziness. Very well said. Thanks for keeping us aware of social courtesies in different arenas. I’d been interested in your perspective on blog-etiquette, too.
Comment by Cathy Dunham — September 1, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
Thanks for the kind words – I will definitely share my thoughts on blog etiquette in an upcoming post.
Comment by Brynn — September 15, 2009 @ 1:33 pm