Dont fall in to the Facebook trap – make it your welcome mat, not your home

Yesterday there was uproar around Facebook communities.  Facebook where making changes to the business pages and after a 9 minute outage, the new look Page had gone as quickly as it appeared.

“How dare they change the format of the Pages” was one comment I read.

“Don’t they know it businesses like ours that pay their salaries – I’m not going to advertise if they take away my welcome page” was another.

Why the uproar?  The new look Page moved the tabs to a left hand menu and had taken away the ability to set a default landing page for “non-likers”.  Lots of businesses have invested several hundred pounds (if not more!) to get this page designed to incorporate opt-in boxes to their mailing lists and persuade the first time visitor to their page to like them.

The problem in all of their complaints is that Facebook is free!  None us pay or subscribe to their services.  Do any of us have the right to complain?

And here lies an even bigger problem – especially if you are relying on Facebook to market your business.

Never make Facebook your home.  Never make any of these social networks THE place you build your business.  If Facebook is the hub of your marketing, it makes it a very dangerous place to be when Facebook keep changing the rules of engagement.

Facebook should always be your welcome mat – a place to direct and invite interested people to find out more on your own terriority.  Your own terriority is your blog, your website.  This is the place you can control.

So hold on to your hats, guys and girls.  It looks like Facebook is going to be pulling in Pages to match up with the new look Profiles.  There seem to be some fab new features – the fact that there were offering a different login for your Profile and Page should allow you to get notifications of when someone posts or comments on your wall.  And I am sure there will other goodies too.

Oh and if you are thinking of asking someone to design a new landing page for your Facebook Page – hold off for the moment!!  It looks like it could be a waste of your money.

How much do you rely on Facebook in your marketing?  And what do you think about these upcoming changes?

Other articles you may be interested in:

1. Your website home page – how important is it any more?
2. Social Media Success: How Do You Make It Work?
3. LinkedIn: Offline + Online = Make Sense Networking