Why We’re Not On Facebook

Illustration by Matt Hamm

Recently, Social Times cited a study showing that 50% of companies entering social media have no plan.  It’s sort of like going on a road trip without a GPS. It could be an interesting ride, but it may not get you where you need to go.

Social media are simply tools that facilitate conversations between individuals. What social media you deploy and how you deploy it should really be driven by the goals and needs of your business.

Rather than saying, “We need to be on Facebook,” what you need to be saying is, “Who am I trying to engage and why? What are their needs and interests? What are they saying online and how can I contribute to the conversation?”

There’s a huge misconception that companies need to be on every popular form of social media. You’re told you need a blog, Twitter profile, Facebook page, LinkedIn group, Digg profile, YouTube channel, Flickr account and don’t forget Foursquare! But are your customers there? And do you have the resources to engage and respond to your customers regularly on all of these platforms? If not, you’re better off doing nothing, than doing any of these options poorly.

When we redesigned our website, we decided to change our web strategy to encourage greater participation of all Manning employees and clients in our site. We wanted to engage our customers, potential customers and peers in more meaningful way and carefully chose social media that we thought would be most interesting and relevant to their needs. We have a WordPress blog to provide extended commentary about our industry, technology and how our work relates to both. We have a Twitter feed as a quick way to make work-related comments, link sharing, or musings. And we use Tumblr to share various types of media including quotes, images, graphics and video. And we’ve integrated all three of these social media tools into our site. We’ve also provided commenting and social sharing capabilities throughout the Manning site.

However, we chose not to have a Manning Facebook page. The reason for this is simple. For now, we do not believe our clients and peers choose to engage with us through Facebook. This could change, but for now we’ve decided to allocate our resources to the social media that allows us to engage and share our thought processes most effectively.