The Decline Of Facebook

Earlier this year we posted an article entitled Facebook’s New Rules (And How They Affect Your Business’s Fan Page). Ever since then, and even a short while before, things were not looking too good for the social media giant. It seemed as though it was critically hit and struggling for air as it clung to it’s last moments of life.

What Went Wrong?

• The IPO Was A Disaster. As you may have all noticed, when Facebook initially offered it’s company stock on the stock exchange it was a huge bust. The first day Mark Zuckerburg probably expected his bank account to explode, however it fell flat miserably. The new investors lead to increased pressure to make Facebook profitable which then lead to the next bullet-point.
• Forcing Everyone To Pay For Everything. As we mentioned in our previous post about Facebook, earlier this year business pages had a decline in people viewing their post. This was however a clever ploy by Facebook to make people pay for ads to have their posts viewed. They stated that people didn’t want to see constant posts from brands. However, what they really meant was they wouldn’t LET people see posts from brands (unless they paid!) Initially Facebook was an internet marketers dream. Free and effective marketing for your business. However, now Facebook is extremely costly and ineffective. This lead to the next bullet-point
• Ads. Facebook became heavily ad related in the past few years. In efforts to please investors Facebook began to charge people for everything and this lead to the entire site being riddled with advertisements. At first it wasn’t too bad with a few ads on the home screen asking you to like a few Facebook pages. But once Facebook started asking you to buy ads so people saw your business’s posts then you started seeing them under photos, in your news feed, etc.
• Exclusivity Went Out The Window. When Facebook first started it was extremely popular and exclusive to College kids. The number one rule of economics is supply and demand. Once Facebook started letting anybody join that’s when it began to decline. Now teenagers complain that their parents have Facebook profiles. It seems the only people still on Facebook are creepy old men looking at Facebook profiles all day.
• Games. First it was Farmville, then it was Mobsters, Words with Friends, Angry Birds, whatever! Everybody got sick of people inviting them to play games and not to mention the constant Facebook updates of how well all your friends were updating their farms. Geez!

Where To Direct Your Business’s Social Media Attention To Next?

YouTube

You may think that YouTube is only for videos, however YouTube is the 2nd biggest social network out there. Yes it is a social network. If your business is able to create unique and entertaining video content then you will gain huge rewards for using YouTube.

YouTube is owned by Google and is highly search engine optimization. Not to mention that if you post useful content, your videos will get clicked 9 times out of 10 if they show up on the first page of Google over any article. People don’t want to read anymore they’d rather watch a short video teaching them what they want to learn. You could be that video. If you thought blog posts were great for generating traffic and gaining leads, YouTube videos are like blog posts ON STEROIDS! Add a link or an annotation to your website in the description and you now have one more avenue to drive traffic to your website.

Instagram

Many people think that Instagram is only for taking pictures of your dinner, however it is growing increasingly popular. Make an Instagram account for your business and take some cool/fun corporate pictures around the office. Maybe some pictures of your company events. Then pepper in some square advertisements and you’re good to go. Engage your followers with contests and encourage them to repost and tag your organization and contest name and you will be on your way to gaining exposure!

Twitter

Facebook’s brother with ADD is still kicking. Twitter is still very popular. So popular in fact that if you post something it’s likely to be gone from your followers home screen in two seconds. Don’t get discouraged though, the nature of Twitter is to engage your followers and constantly post interesting and relevant content.

Google+

Google+ isn’t my favorite social network and will most likely NEVER catch on. However, if you use Google+, Google will thank you with search engine rankings. Set up a profile for your business, it will help with local searches. One very weird SEO trick is to put a Google+, +1 button on your pages and it helps you get higher rankings. Google will probably never admit to it but it’s definitely true.