Comments on: 3 Reasons why brands and marketers should be wary of facebook

By: Mike McDowell

Mike McDowell — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:39:54 +0000

Well said. I definitely have a lot of clients who think they MUST have a facebook page to survive. Nevermind that they need to understand what in the heck to do with a facebook page once they create it – facebook pages/groups/etc are NOT conducive to connecting with fans/friends/followers. You’re spot on about notifications and even links to your groups being very inconspicuous. The really do need to make some adjustments. We’ll see how quick they are to redesign again after this last phase.

By: Michael Nurse

Michael Nurse — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:03:50 +0000

Like most shiny new marketing objects, Facebook and any other social media / user generated content needs to be a part of the marketing mix – not THE marketing mix…

By: Ackley Gaskin

Ackley Gaskin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:15:41 +0000

I co-sign this.

Change to custom pages was a step backwards from a Branding aspect

FB did not take user navigation to preferred content into consideration with the new design. How effective is it once I join a fan page if it takes so much clicks to find the page again and if I am not notified properly about the update. Really puts a dent into trying to build a extended relationship with fan page members

I hope FB reads into the feedback they are getting from users etc and fixes the usability issues in the next release.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:12:43 +0000

I 100% agree.

I worked on the Heart and Stroke Barrie Chapter group, and four to five clicks later, I can finally get to it. In addition, All the public groups that I belong to now I don’t have a clue whats going on as, I like many people, only look at stuff thats splashed infront of me. When your viewing anywhere between 5-50 sites at a time, if its not front and center, its not getting read.

The only group that I would say combats this – and takes time to do so – is the ones that send out personal emails. It’s a mass message, but hey, I’m always up to date, and it does appear in my inbox.

I to am a big big fan of Facebook, but as many social networking sites dictate, it may be free to open, but takes a great amount of time to get it to really work for ya.

Josh

By: David

David — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:07:04 +0000

An interesting perspective for “point #4.”: Our audience doesn’t want us there.
Third Thursday in Ottawa (on Monday). Was chaired by, not for profit organizations. One of the speakers was a union rep. And he agreed that his users were almost all on Facebook, but they were not considering entering that space, because “chllin with your union” is the last thing you want to do on facebook.

I dont necessarily agree, Facebook doesn’t have to be exclusively a “place to hang out”. In fact you could probably file this under “doesn’t get it” Especially when you know your audience is there… but it was an interesting point of view