Facebook at it again! The likes on your fan page are useless!

Joanna Engelbrecht of Xparteez shared an article with our online community and it inspired me to write this article.    I have to wonder what’s going on in Mark Zukerberg’s head.   Facebook made a few changes not so long ago.  It’s beginning to feel like everytime you  look away Facebook has another surprise up their sleeve for you.

Facebook officially kills organic reach for brands,
making all your Page “Likes” useless, read more…,

It was coming!  I’ve always recommended that you have an established home base.  Own your brand as much as you possibly can and keep your fans and followers who engage with you close to your heart.  Social networks are just tools you can leverage.   It’s not impossible that one day you could wake up with the world literally falling apart  because Facebook no longer exists.  It was only a matter of time before social would become paid.

I wonder how many businesses will begin to use their profiles as their business brand page as I’ve seen already seen this happening.  

What peeves me off immensely though is how Facebook decides for you what you get to see in your timeline. My argument is if I chose to see a fan page by liking it then surely I reserve the right to see posts from that fan page until such time as I might decide not to see anything from that page.

Search Engine Optimisation, Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and…

This also makes me wonder if Google Plus pages might take off with a bang! Google still owns a substantial amount of weight in search and many people still use Google as a main search engine.  Admittedly though Google Plus feels like a bit of a ghost town.   Google might also switch to paid,  but only Google will know that.  Google already encourages you to use Google Adwords alongside your Plus page.  It’s free however, and you can possibly gain better results in search but you must know how to optimise properly and know how to leverage social networks to your advantage and have a clear plan of action with the long term goal of keeping your fans and followers close to your heart.  This applies to all social networking sites.  They are just tools, so use them wisely.

Just the other day I was searching for something completely off topic for research I was doing.  And while searching in Google I typed in the term “knowing your values” and in my search results in the top 10 Carol Gerber, The Possibilities Coach had written an article which she shared in Google Plus.  (See Carol the mentoring is paying off 🙂 )

There is one big downside.  I have to be logged into my Gmail account to be able to see Carol’s results while searching in Google.  If you are in global search meaning logged out of your Gmail then Google delivers a completely different result and sadly Carol article disappeared.  However, there is still some weight in this.  Make no mistake!    Carol showed up in my search results to start with which led me to read her article.  I sent her my feedback and recommendations. If Carol tweaks and optimises her article and also her Google Plus post, then it is not impossible for both to land in the top 10 on global and local search.  The other advantage is that her article had great value so I shared it again and will be using it as a resource in my online training program which will expand her reach further.

Everyone has to make their money levering their product or service

Ok, Facebook makes more than ample but it is what it is and we should adopt the attitude of fair exchange.  You are using their platform to advertise so it’s fair that you pay to use their service.  In your business planning you will need to factor in online costs such as content creation costs, advertising costs and advisory/strategy costs.  Sadly it does once again put a strain start up and growing businesses.  Large corporations are already paying for all the resources they need to manage online effectively.

What does this mean for start up and growing businesses?

It just means that you will need to get very creative and used paid advertising wisely.

It’s time to realise that social media networks and marketing your business online was never free to begin with.  For starters if you are working for yourself and you are doing your own online marketing you are chewing up at minimum 15 hrs a month.  The question is,  “are you using your time strategically?”  Then, you need to ask yourself, “how much does that cost me in monetary value based on the rates I charge?

At some point you will need to sign up to use paid tools to help you manage your content both strategically and effectively.  You will need help, whether you pay someone monthly to guide and advise you with ideas and strategies or hire a junior or use outsource services to help you with creating and distributing content.

Now is the time to pull up your socks and stop wasting your time and either take the bull by the horns and learn how to do market yourself effectively or  hand it over to a professional or walk away and not do it at all.  Your time and your money is valuable.  The attitude is that anyone can do it and there is some truth in that.   However, I don’t go learn how to coach myself before hiring a business coach.  I don’t try fixing  my car before taking it to a mechanic and yet when it comes to online marketing people think it is the easiest thing in the world to do. All you need to do is attend a few workshops and you are sorted.  The question is, are you really sorted?  Do you honestly know what to do, where to start and how to get results.

A better investment might be to stop attending workshops and rather work closely with a specialist advisor who can guide you through the process.  Where you can ask questions and get your online marketing moving in the right direction.  It might seem like an expensive cost but it’s an investment in your business and it will save you a lot of wasted time and a very expensive bill in mistakes.