The biggest news today is of course the lack of it on Facebook. Australian Government agencies and Australian news sites have no posts at all… take a look at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) page below. News pages such News.com.au, ABC pages and even Queensland Health et al look exactly the same, that is, completely devoid of all posts.
As users we were greeted this morning with this warning. As businesses we were not notified at all.
This is a great reminder that we don’t own our audience on Facebook… we are just renting at best (if you pay for ads) or even just squatting.
Make no mistake, I still believe we should use social media. Facebook and other platforms give us a LOT of tech for free. The ability to create our own content, connect with friends and businesses, livestream and the list goes on… but ultimately they control your page, your group, your posts.
As business owners and marketers, we need to use these platforms to engage with our market but for longevity we need to manage that engagement. We need to lead traffic to our own website and capture email addresses so we can control the conversation and own our community of buyers and interested parties. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “never trust any platform” but just respectfully remember that if you are using any social media or platforms like Wix, Weebly, Shopify etc. for business, that you are beholden to their changes. You can only ever truly own your own website (assuming it is build in an open source system like WordPress).
The Australian Government is still in talks with Mark Zuckerberg… let’s hope we can at least get the weather back!
