Facebook is used by millions of social media savvy businesspeople, as a way to develop relationships, connect with people and share ideas / content. The service is free and boasts over 400,000,000 users. This offers huge marketing potential.
So, why am I increasingly being asked by business owners if they should even use the service any more?
Facebook and privacy
The challenge is one of privacy. By default, most of what you do on Facebook is searchable or findable by others. Even if you have managed to locate and use the various privacy options, most of your data is still findable. Facebook have also changed how privacy works, so many people who have not recently reviewed their settings are now sharing more than they might think.
Facebook, Marketing and privacy
For people like myself, who exclusively use Facebook for commercial purposes, there’s no real problem. I’m happy for 100% of what I put onto Facebook to be seen by everyone. However, many small business owners use a single Facebook account for both personal and business use. For these people, it seems a challenge exists, as it’s increasingly hard (some say impossible) to keep the personal stuff personal.
I wanted to know what business users of Facebook thought about these privacy issues. I have already received feedback from over 70 people; via Twitter, email and comments. Some people had very specific, individual issues; however, I was surprised that the vast majority of people responded to me along similar lines.
They don’t seem to agree with Facebook’s approach to privacy (and neither do I, for the record) BUT they are now self-regulating what they post there; assuming it’s all going to be searchable and used by Facebook to sell on to it’s advertisers.
Facebook & other free online services
Many people I have spoken to about this, have stated that with every popular online service, there’s a price to pay; even if we don’t need to give someone our credit card details.
Examples people gave me included the way that free wordpress.com blogs have Google ads inserted into the user’s posts, which the user themselves can’t see or control. Gmail was another example offered, where Google scan your emails for key words, so they can serve up ads to you.
What Facebook does is similar, BUT different. Facebook has been less than consistent with it’s privacy messages, as can be seen from this post by The EFF Electronic Freedom Foundation. This clearly shows that Facebook has kept moving the goalposts, after gaining huge market share.
It seems that there is little choice currently, for those with concerns over Facebook’s under-fire attitude to it’s users privacy. Users can either stop posting anything that they don’t want made very public – or stop using the service.
Facebook and marketing: Your thoughts
I would really like to know your thoughts and suggestions for businesspeople, using Facebook as part of their marketing. How do you use the service now? Are you one of those who have recently left the service? Do you moderate what you put on Facebook?
Please let us know what you think!
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