Not to be all "what if"--but the more integral to companies' social media efforts Facebook becomes, the more leery I am about the idea of putting business eggs in a basket over which one has no control. Twitter has already announced that it's testing some business features; Facebook pages, however, while clearly a business offering, are still dependent on individual profiles. This is a HUGE liability which is virtually never discussed--I've literally seen one blog post addressing the issue.
Ok, so say you're the individual who initially set up a huge brand's Facebook page. First of all, congratulations to you--you've basically made yourself indispensable to your company or agency because if you go, the brand's page goes. Seriously. The ability to transfer ownership of that page to anyone flat-out does not exist. So you set that up, pour tons of money into having the page customized because of course you need that (not really--but of course your social media guru charging a metric shit ton per hour will tell you you need that.) So you pour thousands--or tens of thousands--of dollars into customizing your page. You add fan page widgets to your web site, add your Facebook url to all your print collateral and pay your social media guru even more to analyze the ROI of every fan, interaction, page view and what-have-you.
Then one day--poof!--Big Brother Facebook decides that the admin for your page has been bad in some way and banishes him/her forever. Apparently this is happening (hat tip to Carri Bugbee for tweeting about this) . No warning, no explanation--just you go to log into Facebook one day and can't because your profile has been deleted. Your profile and all Pages and/or ad campaigns gone too. Yes, really.
"Not only was my profile disabled, but a facebook ad campaign I was runnig [sic] disappeared, as did the 'Page' I use to promote a business." (comment by C.J.)
How come with all the billions of social media experts out there nobody is talking about this? If companies are investing real money in Facebook, why is Facebook not offering businesses a REAL business option--e.g. pages not tied to individual accounts that can be disabled with no warning or explanation at Facebook's whim? What recourse does a business have if Facebook decides to delete the page they've invested tens of thousands of dollars into? If anyone has answers to any of these questions, please share.
Link to original post
Ok, so say you're the individual who initially set up a huge brand's Facebook page. First of all, congratulations to you--you've basically made yourself indispensable to your company or agency because if you go, the brand's page goes. Seriously. The ability to transfer ownership of that page to anyone flat-out does not exist. So you set that up, pour tons of money into having the page customized because of course you need that (not really--but of course your social media guru charging a metric shit ton per hour will tell you you need that.) So you pour thousands--or tens of thousands--of dollars into customizing your page. You add fan page widgets to your web site, add your Facebook url to all your print collateral and pay your social media guru even more to analyze the ROI of every fan, interaction, page view and what-have-you.
Then one day--poof!--Big Brother Facebook decides that the admin for your page has been bad in some way and banishes him/her forever. Apparently this is happening (hat tip to Carri Bugbee for tweeting about this) . No warning, no explanation--just you go to log into Facebook one day and can't because your profile has been deleted. Your profile and all Pages and/or ad campaigns gone too. Yes, really.
"Not only was my profile disabled, but a facebook ad campaign I was runnig [sic] disappeared, as did the 'Page' I use to promote a business." (comment by C.J.)
How come with all the billions of social media experts out there nobody is talking about this? If companies are investing real money in Facebook, why is Facebook not offering businesses a REAL business option--e.g. pages not tied to individual accounts that can be disabled with no warning or explanation at Facebook's whim? What recourse does a business have if Facebook decides to delete the page they've invested tens of thousands of dollars into? If anyone has answers to any of these questions, please share.
Link to original post
Comments
I've not directly faced the situation you outline, but in other similar ones I've found Facebook's support very helpful - and they can do an awful lot that isn't available to the rest of us via on screen options. Although Facebook's tech support for private individuals is very variable, for companies with pages (i.e. those who they want to get spending advertising money with them) it's been consistently pretty good in my experience. |
FB Fan pages are WAY oversold by people peddling social media marketing. I have NEVER taken an action to purchase based on anything I have ever seen on FB, and never will unless and until the person behind the page shows up to be personally conversant; otherwise, they are just practicing interruption marketing and I am making the personal choice to stop rewarding businesses that don't value me enough to at least personally say "hello", "thank you" and "what do you think?" |
Suppose your assertions are correct and companies should not rely on Facebook. Isn't the same true of every social media tool -- for the same reason they are all third-party controlled? Is there any cloud computing service, Google included, that could not poof out of the blue? Kudos for suggesting paranoia is necessary, but when was the last time risk management was not undertaken at a business? |
I could not agree more with this article, in fact a few months I started advising customers on the pros and cons of Facebook marketing because it was only a few months ago that my own account was compromised, I could not get in touch with FB as they don´t have phone support (which amazes me, being such a large company, I can manage to speak to my customers, the big boys always think they can change the rules of business!), so I was locked out for months while someone sent spam using my name and there was nothing I could do, I was refused access. Now, after all this FB have now decided that we were the spammers and blocked all content to our own websites, flagging us as phishing! During this down time we were unable to communicate with customers and friends, all our ads were down, fortunately for me, my partner was also an admin for all these groups so using his account I could gain access, this was a valid lesson learned, if it had just been me then we would have been well and truly buggered! This got me thinking that should my customers place their websites on FB, what if they get hacked? Social Media then turns everything upside down and you go from being a good business person who is well liked to having your business name being blacklisted on FB - I am very sceptical now indeed. FB should stay as a social network for friends and that be it, but this is now too late, they are already big enough but clearly do not take their security seriously, I have been on many social networks for years but FB is the one where spam keeps flooding in! |
When brands work with Facebook on projects that generate revenue for Facebook (i.e., ads), Facebook is more than helpful in assisting with setup of business accounts specific to advertising. This eliminates the dependence on an individual user's account and allows for multiple people across an organization to manage advertising campaigns. Our experience working with Facebook as a platform provider have also been really positive - they are helpful and offer creative solutions because they do know that they are not yet terribly business-friendly - they're more than aware of the limitations and issues they create by tying brand pages to individuals. I'm pretty sure they're working on ways to make the experience better for businesses. |
Probably nobody talks about this because it's not such a huge problem ! It's really hard to believe that Facebook is deleting accounts without any warnings (I'm pretty sure that the person is not telling the whole story which probably related to spamming on FB). I don't want to say that Facebook is without flaws, but it seems to be working quite well for a lot of brands. |
Social networking needs time and much effort to establish great connections. And you could not do it overnight. If you think otherwise, perhaps other networking solutions should fit you. Besides, think that social networking is a fun way to get connected. So just bear with the maintenance to soon reap benefits. Now that you are faced with some of the major pros and cons of social networking sites, the success of your goals relies on you. Keep in mind that the concerns about social networking should not overwhelm you. Be one of the people who are currently enjoying the wonders of the Internet. Steven tayler @ Prostate Problems |
Here's another example of what I'm talking about: http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/11/19/dear-facebook-ads-customer-support-sucks/ I'm sorry but in these days of social CRM and companies being in touch with--and caring--about what their paying customers are saying about them--Facebook seems totally out of touch. The more stories like these that I read, the worse feeling I get about Facebook. This whole thing is starting to smack of the dot com crash--we're invincible, all we need to focus on is growth, they need us more than we need them, etc. Look how that turned out. |
Maggie, thanks for posting that other article by my pals at AimClear. It's a good indication that even when you're spending oodles of money on behalf of a brand that's a household name, Facebook has no support team in place to help you. I realize some people here say they've been helped, but it's obviously hit or miss. And that's no way to build a serious business enterprise. I've turned up more examples of Facebook pages vanishing without a trace and without explanation. Sometimes they turn up again (without their original vanity URL) and sometimes they don't. What started me down the path of researching this problem was that I was contacted by some people who manage the official Facebook page for (arguably) the best jazz vocalist in the world, Kurt Elling, who also won a Grammy last week. His page with 3,300+ fans SHOULD be at www.facebook.com/kurtelling -- but if you click there, you'll see it just resolves to your home page. Maybe because he won the Grammy, lots of people were posting to the page and that exceeded the dreaded "rate limit." Who knows? Nobody. Since Facebook isn't telling. @CarriBugbee |
I could go on and on about this. GRRRR. Facebook seems to be ADHD and schizophrenic. The constant "enhancements" routinely screw some user audience or another. Here's another example: Nonprofit organizations were first led to believe groups and causes were the way to go. Then, Pages became more powerful due to the ability to have updates included in news feeds. Now, with no notice, their updates have disappeared from news feeds. BTW, attaching pages to individual user's was a bonehead move from the beginning, and now they can't undo the problem. The problem is that FB never had a feasible revenue generating plan at the outset, and now they are looking for ways to monetize, and with every "technology advancement," the problems become more complex. It's like building a house on a faulty foundation on fault line in a flood zone. FB is perfect for social networking, but they could take a page or two from LinkedIn when it comes to building systems for business. The bottom line is that it's hard to be everything to everybody, but if you are going to try, you better have a clear and well-defined vision and you'd better stick to it. |
Nice... |
Great points, and I would like to add another. Too many companies rely on their "social media guru" to set up their Facebook Fan page (sometimes young interns or restless recent college grads), and yet what's the company's certainty that this guru is going to stick around? Social media "experts" are being wooed from companies every day and if they've set up the company Fan page attached to their own personal page, so too goes the company's Fan page! Worse still, if the guru leaves under poor circumstances, they could also alter the page, its content, and anything else they feel like...without any recourse for the sucker company that didn't know better. Who's smug and smiling then? |
Maggie, finally someone is bringing this issue to the public. I own a promotions company in LA and use FB primarily for marketing our events. I have 1-2 events per week which I will promote using our FB fan page (2000 fans), FB ads, postings, invites and email messages to invitees FB inbox through the 'send message to all' function on a FB invites. A year ago and without warning my account was suspended for a month because FB said someone complained about receiving an unwanted email. I had to search for hours to finally file a grievance on my behalf since the person complaining was invited by someone I had invited and not directly by me. I eventually got my account back but it took many emails to FB with very few returned to me. Keeping me in the dark for weeks seemed to be their punishment. Months after that was cleared up FB one day removed my 'message all' function from my FB fan page invites. This is not hard to get around but still an inconvenience (FB deletes features & users all the time w/o warning, research it Giedrius Ivanauskas)... Seems like they are trying to hurt my business which has paid FB a couple thousand in advertising since I started using FB ads. Why create a system that's easy to contact friends and inform them of your life/business then punish us with no warning? The FB 'God Complex' is not cool... |
Hi Maggie, Interesting post for sure and you are spot on to point out this frustrating "glitch" in Facebook's rules. 1) For companies with employees, I strongly recommend setting up a) a BUSINESS Account to be the main Admin/creator of the Fan Page. Hardly anyone even knows this option exists and it’s only designed for those individuals who choose to NOT have a personal Profile at all on Facebook. Facebook insists on an email address *and* date of birth to create a Business Account; plus you have to create a Fan Page or Ad then set up the Business Account in the process. Yes, it’s convoluted, but can be a welcome solution to having any member of staff (or third-party) be the originating Fan Page Admin only to later be shut down or move on from the company. To quote Facebook: Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their Ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests. See the following from Facebook's Help Center for further details: b) a separate PERSONAL profile specifically to be the originating Admin of the fan page. It is actually against Facebook’s Terms of Use to have more than one personal Profile per individual (which *includes* Business Accounts – so, every eligible person on the planet over the age of 13 is “allowed” EITHER one personal Profile OR one Business Account). Ideally this personal Profile would be in the name of a senior member of staff who clearly understands their personal Profile is being tied to the company’s Fan Page for life. Yes, sadly, it’s that strong a commitment as you’re pointing out in this post. But, what I’m saying is knowing this ahead of time, companies can be far more aware of how to work within Facebook’s rules and still avoid any disasters. 2) Companies should *never* have a single Admin on their fan page. The moment an Admin sets up a fan page, the first thing they should do is go in and assign at least one if not more Admins. Unfortunately, the originating Admin can never be removed but at least other members of staff can take responsibility for edits, ad campaigns etc. There is no limit to the number of Admins a Page can have: With Facebook’s 400 million strong userbase and average user session time of 55 minutes, if companies choose not to have a dynamic presence on Facebook they are missing out big time and leaving much money on the table. As I say, you’re right to draw attention to this most frustrating aspect of Facebook for business… yet the more savvy social media experts need to be fully familiar with the options available that will keep within Facebook’s TOS and still yield significant, positive results. Having said all this, I’m actually confident that Facebook will be forced to rectify this challenging situation as more horror stories spring up like the ones you describe here. Facebook’s future depends on robust advertising revenue; imho, they cannot “afford” to tick people off by enforcing such rules as non-transference of a Fan Page Admin. Cheers, @marismith Co-Author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day (Sybex/Wiley, May 3, 2010) |
Great post Maggie, and good comments too. I see a facebook fan page as just one tactic in the whole social media marketing basket and as such, its potential absence will be hedged by a presence across the entire social media spectrum (video-sharing, document-sharing, image-sharing, bookmarking, micro-blogging, blogging, etc). So, I do not see a downside to having a FB page. It is, after all, a free form of promotion and can enhance the brand awareness for a business. However, investing heaps of money and depending solely on a FB page certainly would be unwise. My 2 cents :) |
This is exactly why a company needs to have clear-cut policies and responsible individuals (notice, plural) for the company's social media and their employees' use of social media. No company should set up any website or online tool without backups. A company's page should have multiple admins and should have the account linked to a business profile, not a personal one. That way, the page isn't reliant on one account. You wouldn't set up a website and only have one person know the login info for the company's website, why would you do that with any other online tool? |
Great post, great thread. Will monitor this one. We chose not to go via FB for our social widget (content monetization/sales mgt tool), we elected to go rest-of-market and will wrap back around to FB. Their behavior doesn't seem market rationale (mark, dude, it's all about the people, r-e-s-p-e-c-t). Thanks again. Ariel Vwala.com |
Thanks for the continuing stream of great comments. Huge hat-tip, again, to Carri Bugbee for being the one to originally post about this, because if anything will help solve this problem for everyone it's raising awareness of it and hopefully getting on Facebook's radar that this is an issue that they need to address. The bottom line is that, yes, there are hoops you can jump through--like business accounts or setting up an additional account in the name of one person in the business, but the issue still remains that Facebook has ultimate control and no accountability--no matter how much money a company may be spending on Facebook ads. Right now Facebook feels that they're untouchable because they've got so many users--but plenty of companies have been there before and fallen. Facebook will be no different unless it stops fooling around with the layout of the home page and starts addressing one issue that ultimately matters to its survival: keeping the money coming in. |
Ok, to say that any company should avoid the largest marketing source in the world to date is downright ignorant. Easy solutions to this are: 1. set up the company's page using a company account. 2. set up the page as a company (don't hire a consultant) - seriously, if your company is unable to create a page on FB without shelling out untold dollars to someone, maybe its time to hire one of the 400M+ active users on Facebook to work for you, and use their "talents" for your company. |
Facebook must continue "...fooling around with the layout of the home page..." as its enhanced website usability will only be a competitive advantage. Ease-of-use is a critical - and often ignored - quality attribute and it must be regularly tested and improved. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html Facebook was a usability nightmare from day one. The fact that facebook cares about its users satisfaction is evident by their latest improvements to their interface. Such iterations will allow them to hedge against losing market share. People love usability and they will become more satisfied customers in the long run. |
No comments:
Post a Comment