Okay so this is a little change of pace…   Usually when I blog about social media it’s the standard “5 ways to….”  or “7 tips for….” or “the 6 best….” – some type of informative lesson with the perfect title designed to explode our SEO to Jupiter and make our blog the envy of every photography studio East (and West) of the Mississippi.  Okay well maybe that hasn’t quite happened (yet) but one can dream…..right?

This time it’s a little different…

This is part 1 of what could be a series of streams of consciousness about social media as it relates to Frameable Faces, being a small business owner in general, or whatever else I feel like ranting about.  It is a stream of consciousness after all, so who knows what I’ll say right?  And just because there’s a part 1 doesn’t mean there will be a part 2 – that could depend on the response, so be sure to comment and share this post or lose this potential opportunity forever (see – when all else fails just scare them into sharing – that should work).

Facebook Fail?

I am a facebook power user.  Have been for 5 years.  Facebook has changed and I’ve blogged at length about how to navigate the changes.  I practice the techniques I’ve preached when it comes to staying the course, but I will admit that I’m not perfect (HA) and yes occasionally I get a little annoyed at how facebook manipulates the user experience to generate money (this usually happens after I post something boring that no one shares).  While you’ll normally find me preaching to stop whining about the facebook changes and create better content, I’m just being honest here – I do whine once in a while.  Observe:

Text-only posts are getting the most reach right now by a mile for business pages.  I had a text-only post on Friday get a 450 reach with no likes or comments.  It was a dud and yet it still went out to almost half of our following.  The following day I posted a link to a blog post I thought was a good one – no one agreed with me since no one commented and it only reached 93 – only slightly more than one fifth the reach of the text-only post.  Then there’s the recent status of ours that contained a link to a blog post which got 25 likes and 9 comments and only reached 306.  Oh yeah facebook – that’s really hilarious.   Hahaha.  Ugh.  BUT – the other way of looking at this is that I’m okay with 306 people seeing a great post and a good percentage of them clicking on it and appreciating it.  That’s a more successful post than a post that went to 450 that no one cared about.  And if my other post that only went to 93 would have been more interesting then more than 93 people would have seen it.  Remember to take accountability for your content.  So you see how that goes?  I have my moment of weakness, but then I right myself and get back on course creating the best content I can.  That’s what happens in my head.

That said, I notice as an end user that my “most recent” items in my newsfeed aren’t recent at all.  Sometimes the most recent is two days old – I can see how facebook is holding back the content I want to see, so I have to go find the info manually.  Annoying.

Facebook Future?

This all makes me wonder about the future of facebook – it’s not as cool of a place as it used to be.  Too much garbage, spam, memes, chains, links, etc.  I just wish people would post a little bit less of that stuff and more of their own thoughts, and I wish brands would stop littering with salesy posts, crappy ads and specials begging for business.  Sigh.  Now I’m in no way thinking about jumping off the facebook bandwagon, but I’ve always been careful to make sure our eggs are never only in the facebook basket either….

Looking on the “plus” side of life….

I’ve actually been thinking about revisiting Google+.  I’ve always thought it was a ghost town, but a very interesting thing happened on Scott Stratten’s blog recently where he ripped G+ for inflating their numbers based on total Google usage across all of their products and a lot of people ripped him in the comments… he defended himself for a while but eventually he posted an updated retraction when he was proven to have had a slightly incorrect reading of the numbers.  Keep in mind that Scott Stratten is one of the baddest dudes in marketing in my opinion (he calls what he does UnMarketing) and whether it was just a technicality that prompted his retraction or if he is really softening his stance on G+, it was the visceral reaction by so many on his blog defending Google coupled with the changes on facebook that is making me look at adding G+ as a regular spot for us.  I’ve referenced Scott here not to point out that he was wrong, but to point out that I think he is almost never wrong and this got my attention.  The question now is how we might use G+.  We mostly use social media platforms for one of two reasons:

1) The “age old” (at least a few years) social media criteria of be where your peeps are

2) We use the platform for a specific purpose – either for a certain kind of content (like Instagram is our behind-the-scenes platform) or maybe it’s a good place to get info (still our favorite use for twitter – not the only use, just our favorite).  I don’t like to simply duplicate content and behavior on two different platforms (part of the reason we don’t automate from one platform to another).

So that leads me back to G+ where I suspect that there is some exploration to be done specific to photography – seems that some photogs/bloggers/hangout-ers are getting a lot out of it.  It might be a good time to make some connections there if it’s really still growing.  Disclaimer here – we actually have a G+ page for Frameable Faces and yes I have been posting links to new blog posts there, violating my own rule of not simply duplicating content.  I only do it because it takes two seconds and early on people were saying to post there to help with SEO.  Google is the #1 search engine after all.  Is it helping?  Who knows…  But I do know that G+ is not likely to be going anywhere.  We just got Google computers for our kids….  Google is a monster.  Do you use G+?  Personally?  For your brand?  What do you like about it?  I really would like to know.

So there you have it…. a little bit of my mind in words…. fascinating right?  Stay tuned….  🙂