Every Facebook action has an equal Brand reaction!

Something we never give up on when it comes to socializing and social media marketing is Facebook. After all these years Facebook has maintained its position and promise. Though we may come across many complaining users of Facebook but then the list of happy ones are far ahead.

The ones who call Facebook evil are usually the Brands. As Facebook is always in an “upgrading” and “adding” mode, it keeps on changing its settings and updating itself.

Like recently Facebook has announced to start with “Page Tagging“. So it is the new knight in shining armor for the brands.

Now the question arises, is Facebook really evil or are Brands too pushy?
Well if we look into the history of Facebook, it has always wanted everyone to grow and earn, including itself. All the standards were projected keeping both the users and brands in mind. But on one side where users enjoy these up-gradations, brands exploit them and as a result Facebook has to introduce new set of rules so that brands can’t keep on bugging their users all the time.

For example:

1. Photos and memes: In the beginning photographs were the biggest craze. Everyone was sharing every possible picture on Facebook. But sharing photos in bulk was not a problem. Problem happened when brands started exploiting this.

Everything brands wanted to publish used to be in the form of photos. Even the texts  used were published in the photo boxes with URL pasted into description.

1. Text updates: Then came the vogue of text updates in the form of status updates and other information that users shared with each other to keep their friends and relatives updated.

Brands misused them too. They went out of their way to put everything in the form of text and again spread them around with ugly URLs to improve their reach.

1. CTAs : Call to Action was one new thing that was started by all the brands.

” Click Like if you are against pollution” ;  “Share if you also believe in democracy”…..etc, etc!

Of course they were taking a mind game approach to get noticed but finally even that could not last too long.

1. Hashtags: Hashtags were the recent ones, which were not used by the public much, as people are still learning to share things on Facebook using hashtags but brands never laid behind for a second.

They started using them enthusiastically and even if by mistake you type in the word which has a hashtag…..bang! Here you are flooded with so many advertisements holding that particular tag.

So all these tricks are being used now for a very long time. Although Facebook tried to rescue its users from all this by introducing the sweet option of “Get Notifications” so that people can decide for themselves whom they want to see on their Home Page and whom they want to avoid but brands tried to allure people in “clicking”, and opt for “Get Notifications” from them!

And here comes, “Page Tagging” now. In page tagging smaller brands are tagging bigger brands to reach as many people as possible.

Confused? Suppose you are a very popular celebrity and I am new. I’ll intentionally create a post referring to your work and status and will tag your page in it. As a result, all your friends and followers who get notifications from you can see me also. Yuppie! I got noticed you see!!

The problem is not in reaching public or advertising yourself. But a brand should know how to and when to do the advertising and promotion on Facebook so that it doesn’t become irritating and repelling for general users. People are not on Facebook to engage with brands, they are there to engage with their friends and family.

Treat users as people and not prospect and leads if you really want to be successful in advertising on Facebook. Catch their attention and interest not their attention and annoyance.

© copyright

Khushii