For a few months now, I have been reducing my marketing presence on Facebook.
Generally, I don’t enjoy the conversational tone, and I believe Facebook is losing market power.
Another aspect is to create a safer place where I don’t have workplace colleagues and contacts reading my feed expecting the latest and greatest Geoff news (Woo. Hoo.). I’d rather have a closer family and friend experience there.
This seems to have happened by happenstance, anyway. In fact, of my current consulting and speaking clients, only one head of marketing is a friend on Facebook.
The linchpin was seeing organic unpaid engagement drop on blog posts.
When Facebook drives traffic here, it’s because you decide to share it, not me.
That’s a good thing.
From a social media perspective, you want community carrying the message, not the content creator or in the case of a company, the brand.
Approach Towards Existing and New Friends
In the past, I’ve seen people address personal media evolutions in several ways.
The first and most dramatic method is to publicly kill their Facebook (LinkedIn, Google+, etc.) account, and then start anew or simply depart. Talk about a traffic driver!
And 90% of the time, these people seem to come back. Doh!
The other way is to severely pare back their network.
I thought about this, but decided not to do it. People get really upset when you unfriend them, particularly if they feel strongly about you as a friend or contact.
Instead, I’ll spend some time this holiday season, and build a few lists for family and close friends. This seems to be the middle-of-the-road solution that will cause the least pain.
Finally, while grandfathering my existing friends, I will not accept new friend requests unless I really know you! As in I have met you real life!
There remains a marketing contingent on Facebook. For these, folks the Geoff Livingston Anti-Fan page will have to serve the purpose.
I’ll still do some updates to all friends or publicly. For example, you can continue expecting a Soleil pic of the week.
So that’s it, my big Facebook evolution for 2013.
How is your business/personal use of Facebook evolving?